Wittgenstein in Exile

Wittgenstein in Exile

Wittgenstein in Exile

James C. Klagge

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

© 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email [email protected] This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Klagge, James Carl, 1954–. Wittgenstein in exile / James C. Klagge. â•… p.â•… cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.â•… ) and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01534-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951.╇ I. Title. B3376.W564k55â•… 2010 192—dc22 2010030452 10â•… 9â•… 8â•… 7â•… 6â•… 5â•… 4â•… 3â•… 2â•… 1

Wer das Dichten will verstehen Muß ins Land der Dichtung gehen; Wer den Dichter will verstehen Muß ins Dichters Lande gehen.

Who would the poem understand Must go into the poem’s land; Who would the poet understand Must go into the poet’s lands.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Motto to “Notes & Discussions towards a Better Understanding of West-österlich Divan,” 1819 The searcher has the realization thrust upon him that the historical era he has sought and, if fortunate, called again into partial existence as the world of the poet, is completely alien to the age for which he is evoking it. Values and ideals shift; what one age sought, another may spurn. . . . Neither goal is in itself unworthy, but they are blind to each other’s virtues and have little or no charity for each other’s weaknesses. —Winthrop H. Root, Introduction to Poems and Letters of Nikolaus Lenau, 1964 Forty years ago Wittgenstein’s teaching came to me as a warning against certain intellectual and spiritual dangers by which I was strongly tempted. These dangers still surround us. It would be a tragedy if well-meaning commentators should make it appear that his writings were now easily assimilable into the very intellectual milieu they were largely a warning against. —M. O’C. Drury, Draft of Recollections, 1966 My thoughts are one hundred percent Hebraic. —Wittgenstein to Drury, 1949

Contents

Preface  ix Abbreviations  xi

Introductionâ•… 1 1

No One Understands Meâ•… 5

2

Can We Understand Wittgenstein?â•… 19

3

What Is Understanding?â•… 41

4

Exileâ•… 47

5

Alienation or Engagementâ•… 61

6

The Work of Exileâ•… 73

7

Philosophy and Scienceâ•… 83

8

The Evolution of an Ideaâ•… 97

9

Science and the Mindâ•… 115

10â•… Das erlösende Wortâ•… 125 11â•… Wittgenstein in the Twenty-First Centuryâ•… 143 Notes  155 Bibliography  217 Index  239

Preface

This book is my attempt to see important aspects of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) in relation to his life and how he saw himself. It does not attempt to cover all aspects of his life or his work, but to see ways in which they fit together. Still, I hope it covers enough ground to show that the fit is significant and interesting. I try to take seriously Wittgenstein’s insistence that he would not be understood. That may not seem a very promising line for a book—to come to understand why he cannot be understood—but I hope that it will make more sense as we proceed. I do think that in important ways Wittgenstein is a distant figure from us, and that it is important to see why that is so. This distance is embodied in the metaphor of exile. Though I have been thinking about the ideas in this book for a long time, the opportunity to bring them together into a book was afforded me by Virginia Tech, which provided a teaching reduction in the fall term of 2006 and a research assignment during the spring term of 2007. Were it not for these, it is hard to say whether the book would have been written. In a number of places I have made use of passages from Wittgenstein that were written in German and have not been officially translated. Over the years I have kept translations of such passages, but have not always noted their provenance. Some I have translated myself. In general terms, I have made use of translations by S. Stephen Hilmy, Anthony Kenny, Brian McGuinness, Ray Monk, Michael Nedo, Rush Rhees, and David Stern. I want to thank Elizabeth Bischoff and Deborah Stoudt for their help with my own translations. In writing this book I have drawn on, or even reproduced portions of, some of my earlier publications. Parts of chapters 2 and 4 reproduce portions of the paper “Wittgenstein in Exile,” originally published in Religion and Wittgenstein’s Legacy, edited by D. Z. Phillips and M. von der Ruhe, Ashgate, 2005, used with kind permission of Ashgate, Gower & Lund Humphries Publishing. Chapter 5 mostly reproduces “When Are Ideologies Irreconcilable?

x╆

Preface

Case Studies in Diachronic Anthropology,” originally published in Philosophical Investigations 21 (no. 3), 1998, 268–279, used with kind permission of Wiley-Blackwell. Chapter 7 draws on the first five sections, and chapter 9 draws on the last five sections, of “Wittgenstein and Neuroscience,” Synthese 78 (no. 3), 1989, 319–343, used with kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media. Chapter 8 draws on “Wittgenstein on Non-Mediative Causality,” originally published in Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (no. 4), 1999, 653–667, used with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press, and also draws on portions of “The Puzzle of Goethe’s Influence on Wittgenstein,” originally published in Goethe and Wittgenstein: Seeing the World’s Unity in Its Variety, edited by F. Breithaupt, R. Raatzsch, and B. Kremberg, Peter Lang, 2003, from the series Wittgenstein-Studien, v. 5, 2002, pp. 19–26, used with kind permission of the editors. Chapter 10 draws on “Das erlösende Wort,” originally published in Wittgenstein, Language, and World, edited by V. Munz, K. Puhl, and J. Wang, Ontos-Verlag, 2010, used with kind permission of the editors. In all cases at least minor modifications have been made and additional passages quoted. I learned that it is far easier to write new material than it is to try to incorporate old material, but I’ve done the best I could. I am thankful to previous publishers for permission to use this material. In general terms I would like to thank my original teachers of Wittgenstein—Jesse Bohl and Rogers Albritton. They instilled a love of Wittgenstein’s work, but also a respectfully critical attitude. More recently, I wish to acknowledge the work and support of G. H. von Wright and B. F. McGuinness, who are models for me of good critical scholarship, and who each confirmed for me the value of this project in its early stages. In specific terms I wish to thank four anonymous referees from MIT Press, and the following scholars who read my manuscript with a care that one hopes but does not expect to receive: Peter Barker, Brian Clack, Gabriel Citron, Alois Pichler, Richard Raatzsch, Duncan Richter, Josef Rothhaupt, David Stern, and Béla Szabados. In addition, the following commented on particular chapters or underlying papers: Bill Brenner, Brian Britt, Cora Diamond, Philippa Foot, Marjorie Grene, Peter Hacker, Paul Humphries, Peter John, Vasso Kindi, H. E. Mason, Volker Munz, Alfred Nordmann, David Pears, Jim Peterman, Ilsa Somavilla, Susan Sterrett, Timothy Tessin, and Meredith Williams. It should not be supposed that any of these people agree with my conclusions or arguments. Finally, I wish to thank the people who most encouraged me during the long process of bringing this project to completion—my wife Kathy Carpenter, and our dear friend P. G. Cosby. Blacksburg, Virginia March 2010

Abbreviations

Full details of the works referred to in this book will be found in the bibliography. However, the following works are referred to so commonly as to merit abbreviation as follows: Works by Wittgenstein BB C&V CL GT L&C LW1 LW2 MS or TS

NB OC PG PI PR RPP 1 RPP 2 RFM TLP Z

The Blue and Brown Books, 1958 Culture and Value, 1980/revised edition 1998 Cambridge Letters, 1995 Geheime Tagebücher: 1914–1916, 1991 Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, 1972 Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, v. 1, 1982 Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology: The Inner and the Outer, v. 2, 1992 Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Edition, 2000 (for numbering of typescripts and manuscripts see von Wright, “The Wittgenstein Papers”) Notebooks: 1914–1916, second edition, 1979 On Certainty, 1969 Philosophical Grammar, 1974 Philosophical Investigations, 1953/fourth edition 2009 Philosophical Remarks, 1975 Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, v. 1, 1980 Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, v. 2, 1980 Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Revised edition, 1978 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Pears and McGuinness translation, 1963 Zettel, 1967

Introduction

On Sunday, October 6, 1929, in his rooms in Cambridge, Ludwig Wittgenstein awoke from a dream, “unable to think. Thoughts feverish-dreamlike, repeating,” he wrote, in his simple reverse-alphabet code. He then recorded in plain-alphabet his dream of frustration arguing over the hopeless attempt to repair a mechanism he had once ordered. He concluded the dream description: “I thought: I have to live with people to whom I cannot make myself understood.—That is a thought that I actually do have often. At the same time with the feeling that it is my own fault.” After a brief and somewhat superficial attempt to interpret the dream, he returned to his code-writing: “Feel myself now very alien [fremd] here. Completely dependent on myself. That could be good for me if I knew how to use it properly.”1 In fact, Wittgenstein had arrived in Cambridge in January, after having been away for sixteen years—living alone in Norway, fighting for the Austro-Hungarians in World War I, teaching school in rural Austria, and most recently overseeing the construction of his sister’s house in Vienna. But the fear that he would not be understood was not a new one, and the feeling of being an alien would never leave him. Wittgenstein had returned to Cambridge on January 18, 1929, as a celebrated hero. “God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train,” John Maynard Keynes announced to his wife.2 In 1922 Wittgenstein had published the fruit of several years of philosophical reflections as the enigmatic Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. These reflections were begun in 1912 while he studied with Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) at Cambridge for two years, refined during a year in Norway, transformed in important ways by four years in the trenches of the war, and completed by 1918. At that point, having said everything he thought needed saying about philosophical issues, he went off in silence to be a rural school teacher.3

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Introduction

But instead of settling philosophical issues, the Tractatus only provoked their further discussion, starting in Cambridge and in Vienna. Scientifically minded philosophers in Vienna—the so-called Vienna Circle—studied the book in 1922, and the book was reviewed in the October, 1923, issue of Mind—the leading journal of philosophy in the English-speaking world.4 The reviewer for Mind—the Cambridge prodigy Frank P. Ramsey (1903– 1930)—discussed the work with Wittgenstein in his rural retreat in September, 1923, and members of the Vienna Circle sought him out in 1924, but didn’t manage to meet with him until 1927, when Wittgenstein lived in Vienna. These and later meetings eventually convinced Wittgenstein that he needed to say more, that he had more to say after all, and his new thoughts were awaited with bated breath. Yet, as he tried in vain to explain and then to improve the Tractatus, in ongoing discussions with Ramsey and with some members of the Vienna Circle, he came to realize that mere tinkering would be insufficient—or so the dream of October 6 seemed to be telling him.5 Wittgenstein soon set off in some new philosophical directions over the next twenty years, lecturing to students at Cambridge in some forty-six courses, and writing and rewriting an almost endless stream of manuscripts and typescripts.6 Having risen to be the professor of philosophy at Cambridge in 1939, succeeding G. E. Moore (1873–1958), Wittgenstein retired in 1947 because, among other reasons, he felt teaching hindered his philosophical work.7 He moved on to Dublin and then the Irish countryside to pursue his work. Wittgenstein never brought his writing to a form that fully satisfied him, but at his death in 1951 he left it to some friends to assemble a book eventually published in 1953 as Philosophical Investigations.8 The journal Philosophical Forum surveyed philosophers on what were the most influential philosophical books of the twentieth century. Asked to name and rank “the five most important books in philosophy in the twentieth century,” philosophers most frequently cited (and most often ranked first) Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. The fourth most frequently cited (and fourth most-often ranked first) was Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.9 But these two books are also among the most perplexing. In fact Wittgenstein insisted, over and over, that he was not and would not be understood. And despite its evident importance in the twentieth century, Wittgenstein’s work seems to have rather little relevance to how philosophy is done now— in the twenty-first century. Thus we are faced with two questions: Why is it so difficult to understand Wittgenstein’s work? and What ongoing value does Wittgenstein’s work have for philosophy?

Introduction╆

3

It helps to answer these questions to see Wittgenstein as an exile, an alien. This brief biographical sketch of his life shows a certain geographical rootlessness. But his sense of exile is as much temporal as it is geographical: Wittgenstein thought of himself as at home in an earlier era. Once we see how this can be so, we will also be able to see why he is difficult for us to understand, and why his views have a problematic relevance for our philosophical concerns. Paradoxically, we should gain a better understanding of our difficulty understanding and appreciating Wittgenstein.

1â•… No One Understands Me

Wittgenstein predicted, over and over, throughout his life, that people would not understand him or his work. Yet those who study Wittgenstein regularly fail to note or heed his warnings. This is a most striking fact about Wittgenstein and about scholarship concerning his work. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a short book by any standards—some 22,000 words in English translation—about 50 pages in one English edition, 90 in another.1 It is a decimal-numbered series of paragraphs—many consisting of a single sentence. As Wittgenstein explains in the only footnote: “The decimal numbers assigned to the individual propositions indicate the logical importance of the propositions, the stress laid on them in my exposition. The propositions n.1, n.2, n.3, etc. are comments on proposition no. n; the propositions n.m1, n.m2, etc. are comments on proposition no. n.m; and so on.”2 Yet, despite the brevity and expected clarity, it is rough going, as anyone who has tried to read it unassisted can attest. Consider Wittgenstein’s comments about it: •â•‡

Tractatus (preface), dated 1918: “Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it—or at least similar thoughts.” •â•‡ Letter to Russell, from prisoner of war camp, March 13, 1919: “I’ve got the manuscript here with me. I wish I could copy it out for you; but it’s pretty long and I would have no safe way of sending it to you. In fact you would not understand it without a previous explanation as it’s written in quite short remarks. (This of course means that nobody will understand it; although I believe it’s all as clear as crystal. . .)” (CL, 111). •â•‡ Letter to Russell, June 12, 1919: “In short I’m now afraid that it might be very difficult for me to reach any understanding with you. And the small remaining hope that my manuscript might mean something to you has

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Chapter 1

completely vanished. . . . And it’s equally galling to think that no one will understand it even if it does get printed” (CL, 116). •â•‡ Letter to Russell, August 19, 1919, two days before his release from prison camp: “I also sent my MS to Frege. He wrote to me a week ago and I gather that he doesn’t understand a word of it all” (CL, 124). •â•‡ Letter to von Ficker, concerning a prospective publisher for the Tractatus, 1919: “I told him quite frankly that he would not make any money with my book since no one will read it, even less understand it.”3 •â•‡ Letter to von Ficker, whom Wittgenstein was trying to convince to publish the book, 1919: “For you won’t—I believe—get too much out of reading it. Because you won’t understand it; the content will seem strange to you.”4 •â•‡ Letter to von Ficker, presumably about an outside referee, November 22, 1919: “As far as I’m concerned you can show the manuscript to the philosophy professor (although showing a philosophical work to a professor of philosophy is like casting pearls. . .). At any rate he won’t understand a word of it.”5 •â•‡ Letter to Ogden, his eventual publisher, May 5, 1922: “Rather than print the Ergänzungen [supplements] to make the book fatter leave a dozen white sheets for the reader to swear into when he has purchased the book and can’t understand it.”6 With this kind of recommendation, it’s not surprising that Ludwig von Ficker ultimately declined to publish the book. For Ogden, the warning came too late, as he had already signed on. Wittgenstein’s conviction that the Tractatus would not be understood was pervasive. Unfortunately, Wittgenstein says little about why. Russell had warned him early on that his style was unhelpful: I told him he ought not to simply state what he thinks true, but to give arguments for it, but he said arguments spoil its beauty, and that he would feel as if dirtying a flower with muddy hands. He does appeal to me—the artist in intellect is so rare. I told him I hadn’t the heart to say anything against that, and that he had better acquire a slave to state the arguments. I am seriously afraid that no one will see the point of anything he writes, because he won’t recommend it by arguments addressed to a different point of view.7

When the logician Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) studied the manuscript before its publication, he raised similar concerns: “I find it difficult to understand. You place your propositions one after the other mostly without giving reasons for them, or without giving enough detailed reasons.”8 And he later (September 19, 1919) shared with Wittgenstein his qualms about whether he was among “those who will understand your book,” adding: “Hardly,

No One Understands Me╆

7

without your aid.” Russell had earlier expressed a similar doubt (February 5, 1915; CL, 97): “If only your MSS come to me, I will do my utmost to understand them and make others understand them; but without your help it will be difficult.” Wittgenstein put special hope in the possibility of personal explanation. In a letter to Keyes (June 12, 1919; CL, 114), he wrote: “I wish I could see [Russell] somehow or other, for I am sure he won’t be able to understand my book without a very thorough explanation, which can’t be written.” His hopes seemed to have been borne out, as a week-long meeting between Russell and Wittgenstein in the Hague, in December, 1919, turned out to be very satisfying.9 (A continuation of the trip to visit Frege unfortunately had to be canceled.) Yet when Russell’s apparent understanding was put to the test, in writing the introduction that he promised for Wittgenstein’s work, Wittgenstein found it unsatisfactory.10 Wittgenstein’s work was eventually published under the title “LogischPhilosophische Abhandlung” in 1921 by Wilhelm Ostwald, in a double issue of his journal Annalen der Naturphilosophie, after which the journal folded. Wittgenstein had washed his hands of the attempt to publish, and left the selling job to Russell, who in turn left it to a protégée. By this point Wittgenstein had gone off to teach in rural Austria. The eventual publication as a renamed (Latin-titled) book, with an English translation, was also left to others.11 In both cases Russell’s questionable introduction turned out to be a sine qua non for publication. When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929 he needed some academic credentials, and he submitted the Tractatus as a dissertation for his Ph.D. The obligatory oral examination, administered by Russell and Moore, took place on June 18, 1929. It was less than fully serious, and was brought to an early conclusion by Wittgenstein clapping each of his examiners on the shoulder and exclaiming, “Don’t worry, I know you’ll never understand it.”12 Apparently face-to-face discussions turned out not to have sufficed after all. Why have people had, and continued to have, such difficulty understanding the Tractatus, and why was Wittgenstein so sure that they would not understand? Part of the explanation lies in the wide terrain that the book traverses. Before the war, and during the first years of the war, Wittgenstein’s work had been limited to questions of logic and language, such as: How is it that language is able to represent the world? What is logic (about)? But after he was transferred to the front, in late March of 1916, and later came under heavy attack in June, he began to reflect on a wider range of issues, including God, fate, the will, good and evil, the purpose of life,

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Chapter 1

and death. These new lines of thinking were recorded by Wittgenstein in his Notebooks at the time. Wittgenstein himself noted this transformation when he wrote (August 2, 1916; NB, 79): “Yes, my work has broadened out [sich ausgedehnt] from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world.” Another part of the explanation lies in the difficulty of seeing the motivation of some of these remarks (as Russell had warned), and their connection, if any, with the earlier parts of the book. In the heat of the June attacks Wittgenstein worried in the coded portion of his notebooks (July 6, 1916; GT, 72): “Have thought a great deal on every possible subject. But curiously [sic!] I cannot establish the connection with my mathematical modes of thought.” And then the very next day he reassured himself: “However the connection will be produced!” Consider three key remarks near the end of the Tractatus: 6.373╇ The world is independent of my will. 6.43╇ If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts. . . .The world of the happy man is a different one from the world of the unhappy man. 6.4311╇ . . . If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. . . . Taken in the context of the Tractatus it is very hard to see why Wittgenstein makes these assertions, or why he thinks they are plausible. The more elaborate comments in the Notebooks are helpful, but they nevertheless fail to illuminate the motivations or bolster their plausibility. Yet taken in the context of his experiences at the front, as recorded in the coded remarks in his notebook, they make a great deal more sense. The antecedents for these propositions in the Tractatus appear in the Notebooks beginning in July, as Wittgenstein is under attack. We know this from the coded remarks, where he records that he was first “shot at” on April 29, 1916. “In constant danger of my life” (May 6, 1916; GT, 70). The Brusilov Offensive began June 4, 1916, and he records on June 6: “Colossal exertions in the last month.” And this mortal danger continues through the end of July. During this time he is constantly coaching himself about how to hold up under such difficult conditions—conditions that are quite beyond his control. It is only after he is shot at that God and death are first mentioned in the Notebooks (May 6 and July 5, respectively). He had been calling on God regularly (in the coded remarks) since he entered the service, but it is apparently mortal danger that propelled the concepts into the philosophical Notebooks, from where they then found a place in the Tractatus.

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Perhaps only in the sort of extreme circumstances Wittgenstein was in would someone find it plausible to say that the world was independent of his will. This assertion is made in so many words in the Notebooks on July 5, but is preceded (the date is uncertain—probably June 11) by: “I cannot bend the happenings of the world to my will: I am completely powerless.” Then Wittgenstein goes on stoically to recommend: “I can only make myself independent of the world—and so in a certain sense master it—by renouncing any influence on happenings.” The remark takes life as a form of self-coaching, but then after reflection takes on a metaphysical cast— “the world is independent of my will.”13 Wittgenstein likely chose to put his concerns in just these ways because of his familiarity with the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). Wittgenstein apparently read Schopenhauer when he was sixteen, at least The World as Will and Representation, and had been deeply influenced by him at the time.14 Schopenhauer describes the experience of encountering nearly overwhelming natural phenomena that are beyond our control, which virtually matches Wittgenstein’s experience of battle. Schopenhauer could easily be describing a bombardment during World War I: But the impression becomes even stronger, when we have before our eyes the struggle of the agitated forces of nature on a large scale, when in these surroundings the roaring of a falling stream deprives us of the possibility of hearing our own voices. Or when we are abroad in the storm of tempestuous seas; mountainous waves rise and fall, are dashed violently against steep cliffs, and shoot their spray high into the air. The storm howls, the sea roars, the lightning flashes from black clouds, and thunderclaps drown the noise of storm and sea. Then in the unmoved beholder of this scene the twofold nature of his consciousness reaches the highest distinctness. Simultaneously, he feels himself as individual, as the feeble phenomenon of will, which the slightest touch of these forces can annihilate, helpless against powerful nature, dependent, abandoned to chance, a vanishing nothing in the face of stupendous forces; and he also feels himself as the eternal, serene subject of knowing, who as the condition of every object is the supporter of this whole world, the fearful struggle of nature being only his mental picture or representation; he himself is free from, and foreign to, all willing and all needs, in the quiet comprehension of the Ideas. This is the full impression of the sublime. Here it is caused by the sight of a power beyond all comparison superior to the individual, and threatening him with annihilation.15

For Schopenhauer this experience evokes the feeling of the sublime, which allows one to transcend the terror of the situation. He later alludes to the Stoic strategy for dealing with such circumstances: If . . . we look for the ultimate ground of that unshakable equanimity that is constantly expected of us, we find none other than the knowledge that the course of

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Chapter 1

the world is entirely independent of our will, and consequently that the evil that befalls us is inevitable. If we have regulated our claims in accordance with a correct insight into this, then mourning, rejoicing, fearing, and hoping are follies of which we are no longer capable. . . . all the good things in life are in the power of chance, and consequently as soon as chance exercises this power and takes them away from us, we are unhappy if we have placed our happiness in them. We are supposed to be delivered from this unworthy fate by the correct use of our faculty of reason.16

Clearly this is not originally a metaphysical insight, but a psychological strategy bolstered in turn by a decision to adopt a certain metaphysical view of the world.17 Having renounced the role of the will in changing the facts of the world, Wittgenstein retains a role for it in changing one’s view of those facts. He had earlier reflected (in the coded remarks, May 6): “In constant danger of my life. . . . From time to time I despair. This is the fault of a wrong view of life.” On July 29 in his coded remarks (GT, 74) he goes on to equate sin with “a false view of life.” And on the same day in his philosophical Notebooks he twice states (NB, 77–78) what would become proposition 6.43 (“If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts. . . .The world of the happy man is a different one from the world of the unhappy man”). As Schopenhauer had observed: Our suffering always springs from an incongruity between our desires and the course of the world. One of these two must therefore be changed and adapted to the other. Now as the course of things is not in our power . . . , we must regulate our wishing and desiring according to the course of things, for the will alone is [in our power].18

Wittgenstein encourages himself to be happy rather than unhappy in his circumstances as they are. This is up to him, a matter of the will: “A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death” (July 8, 1916; NB, 74). As indicated in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein took no consolation in the notion of an afterlife (TLP, 6.4312): “Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended.” But he sought something similar in the present. The idea of living in the present is emphasized by Leo Tolstoy (1828– 1910) in his summary of the teachings of Christ, The Gospel in Brief. Wittgenstein’s near-obsession with Tolstoy’s book during his wartime service is well documented. His fellow soldiers nicknamed him “the one with the Gospel.” To von Ficker Wittgenstein wrote: “this book virtually kept me alive.”19

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Tolstoy organizes his summary through a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer. In chapter 8, the chapter about the phrase “This Day” (as in “give us this day our daily bread”), Tolstoy puts these words into the mouth of Jesus: And so, be not downcast, but always live in the present by the spirit. For the life of the spirit there is no time. . . . The time of salvation, like a web, is cast over all; it is there always. And therefore always live the life of the Son of Man. . . . Life is only for this, to exalt the Son of Man, and the Son of Man exists always. He is not in time; and therefore, in serving him, one must live without time, in the present alone.20

And Tolstoy sums up the teaching of this chapter with the epigram: “Therefore true life is to be lived in the present.” In the philosophical Notebooks, Wittgenstein tells himself (July 8; NB, 75): “For life in the present there is no death. . . . If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality, then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present,” and (July 14; NB, 76): “Whoever lives in the present lives without hope and fear.” This selfcoaching in the midst of battle then becomes proposition 6.4311(b) in the Tractatus. That Wittgenstein’s self-coaching was (relatively) successful is shown by the Silver Medal for Valor that he was awarded for actions during the first days of the offensive, and the accompanying report: Volunteer Wittgenstein was attached to the Observer officer during the engagements . . . from 4–6 vi 16. Ignoring the heavy artillery fire on the casement and the exploding mortar bombs he observed the discharge of the mortars and located them. The Battery in fact succeeded in destroying two of the heavy-caliber mortars by direct hits, as was confirmed by prisoners taken. On the Battery Observation Post . . . he observed without intermission in the drumfire, although I several times shouted to him to take cover. By this distinctive behavior he exercised a calming effect on his comrades.21

As for his fearful worries of May 5: “Will I endure it??” he had shown that he could. The bilingual book version of the Tractatus was published by Kegan Paul, under the editorship of C. K. Ogden. As the book was going to press, Ogden wrote asking if Wittgenstein could give him some biographical details about his involvement in the war, for the general interest of the reader—for the back cover, as it were. Wittgenstein responded: As to your note about the Italian monastery [where he had been a prisoner of war], etc. etc., do as you please; only I can’t for my life see the point of it. Why should the general reviewer know my age? Is it as much as to say: You can’t expect more of a young chap especially when he writes a book in such noise as must have been on

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the Austrian front? If I knew that the general reviewer believed in astrology I would suggest to print the date and hour of my birth in front of the book that he might set the horoscope for me. (26/IV 1889. 6 p.m.)22

This is rather ironic, as it was just these kinds of details that I have appealed to in helping to explain our difficulties in understanding the Tractatus. In particular, they help to explain its breadth and choice of topics.23 It was, no doubt, Wittgenstein’s attitude toward this issue that led his student, friend, and literary executor—Elizabeth Anscombe—to write: “If by pressing a button it could have been secured that people would not concern themselves with his personal life, I should have pressed the button. . . .”24 This is unfortunate, but indicative of a common attitude among early adherents to Wittgenstein’s work—that we needn’t look into its wellsprings. Another student, friend, and executor—Rush Rhees—who shared a reluctance to examine Wittgenstein’s life, begins by conceding that Wittgenstein had told him: “My own problems appear in what I write in philosophy . . . although I may think that what I say is essentially something which could have been said by anybody, given the talent.” But then Rhees tries to minimize the importance of this statement by insisting that he obviously did not mean that in seeking the way out of a philosophical difficulty—in applying the methods of philosophical investigation—he was doing what was needed to solve his “own problems”; as though, when he had sorted out the difficulty in philosophy (say a difficulty about “knowledge” and “belief”) he would have the solution of his personal problem there before him. Nor, of course, did he mean that his recognition of the central issues, his methods or his reasonings in philosophy were a consequence of his own problems apparent in his writings; as though you would understand his methods better if you knew what those problems were.25

Yet this is exactly what seems to be true for studying the latter (indeed, later) parts of the Tractatus. Some of the later propositions do specifically address and try to solve some of Wittgenstein’s “own problems” as he endured battle at the front.26 After the halt of the offensive in late August Wittgenstein was withdrawn from the front line and sent to train as an officer in Olmütz, Moravia. Here, beginning in October, he made friends with Paul Engelmann (1891–1965), a resident of the town who had been discharged from the army. It was in conversations over two months with Engelmann, and also with three of Engelmann’s friends, that Wittgenstein deepened his new lines of thinking, and ultimately incorporated them into the Tractatus. Engelmann has said that “Often enough I was able to help [Wittgenstein] find the right words by stating myself the proposition he had in mind.

No One Understands Me╆

13

I could do it because I really had a sensitive understanding for what he wanted to say. More than once on such occasions he exclaimed with relief, ‘If I can’t manage to bring forth a proposition, along comes Engelmann with his forceps and pulls it out of me.’” But it is unlikely that any of these extracted propositions came to have numbers beginning with 1 through 4. Engelmann surely had much less understanding of what Wittgenstein was trying to do in the earlier sections of the Tractatus, where the focus is on logic and language. But Engelmann went on to emphasize the importance of Wittgenstein’s wartime experiences for understanding the Tractatus. Its ideas “are incomprehensible [to the ordinary reader] owing to the absence of the psychological conditions from which alone such thinking can spring and which must exist, though to a lesser degree, in the reader’s mind as well.”27 It seems that there was no one—no single person—who understood, or could understand, the whole thing. That would require a hybrid of Russell and Engelmann. The challenge to students of the Tractatus ever since has been to achieve the breadth of perspectives from which Wittgenstein worked.28 As Wittgenstein moved away from the ideas of the Tractatus in his later work after his return to Cambridge, his misgivings continued: •â•‡

Letter to Russell, concerning Wittgenstein’s impending lecture on generality and infinity in mathematics, July 1929 (CL, 239): “it may be all Chinese to them.” •â•‡ Letter to Rodolf Koder, concerning Wittgenstein’s impeding lecture on ethics, November 1929: “I am sure that almost no one will understand me [mich so gut wie niemand verstehen wird].”29 •â•‡ Wittgenstein’s letter to the editor of Mind, regarding a recently published overview of philosophy at Cambridge, April 12, 1933: “I must warn such a reader that I disclaim all responsibility for the views and thoughts Mr. Braithwaite attributes to me. Part of his statements can be taken to be inaccurate representations of my views, others again clearly contradict them.”30 •â•‡ Wittgenstein’s closing remark to his Easter term, 1939, class: “The seed I’m most likely to sow is a certain jargon.”31 •â•‡ Philosophical Investigations (preface), dated January 1945: “It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another—but, of course, it is not likely.” These misgivings are clearly not as thoroughgoing as they were in connection with the Tractatus. But his experience with the Tractatus set the stage

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Chapter 1

for ongoing concerns. One student and friend of Wittgenstein who appreciated the depth of Wittgenstein’s qualms was Con Drury (1907–1976), who knew Wittgenstein from 1929 onward: “Throughout his life Wittgenstein was convinced that he could not make himself understood.”32 Most significant, perhaps, is that Wittgenstein never again published a substantial philosophical work. Thus, there was no locus for such qualms. Indeed, it may have been his ongoing expectation or fear of being misunderstood that kept him from publishing. Wittgenstein did write to Rush Rhees, on July 13, 1938: “I am thinking of publishing something before long after all so as to end the constant misunderstandings and misinterpretations.”33 But it is hard to take his purpose seriously, since it was just as likely that a publication would itself lead to further “misunderstandings and misinterpretations.” And Wittgenstein doubtless knew that as well.34 But at least for the purposes of gaining grant support, if not also from the desire to express himself, Wittgenstein continued to write and produce. The Council of Trinity at Cambridge needed an assessment of Wittgenstein’s work before renewing his research grant. For this reason G. E. Moore wrote to Russell on March 9, 1930: They have authorized me to ask you to make such a report for them. I’m afraid it will involve a good deal of trouble. Wittgenstein has written a great deal; but he says it would be absolutely necessary for him to explain it to you in conversation, if you are to understand it. . . . [Wittgenstein] would arrange to go see you, when & where it suited you best.35

It turned out that there was no manuscript for Russell to read, only Wittgenstein’s “chance of explaining to you some of the results which he has arrived at.” After a second visit in May, though, he did leave “a large quantity of typescript.” Russell’s official report to the Council, May 8, 1930, noted that “The typescript, which consists merely of rough notes, would have been very difficult to understand without the help of the conversations,” which seem to have extended to nearly five days.36 J. E. Littlewood’s official report to the Council, on June 1, 1930, also additionally mentions “some 6 to 8 sessions of 1 hour to one hour and a half” between himself and Wittgenstein.37 Why did Wittgenstein consider face-to-face discussion essential to understanding? In some cases the preliminary stage of his writing could be relevant, but the need seems to go beyond that. As Wittgenstein had said to Keynes in 1919: “I am sure [Russell] won’t be able to understand my book without a very thorough explanation, which can’t be written.” This is not something that Wittgenstein explains, but we can conjecture.

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15

Wittgenstein’s acquaintance with academic philosophy began with discussion—attending lectures at Cambridge in 1911–1913, and spending endless hours late into the night talking with Russell. Writing papers was not the primary mode of philosophical training for students at Cambridge. Yet when, in late 1911, he wanted to know from Russell early on whether he was “utterly hopeless,” Russell asked him to write a paper, which he did.38 But it was written for Russell. And again, his “Notes on Logic” (NB, appendix I) from early October 1913—before he headed off for Norway— were dictated for Russell. Discussion became so deeply engrained that when Wittgenstein sought to report on the new ideas he was developing in Norway in 1913–1914, he managed to persuade G. E. Moore, University Lecturer in Moral Sciences at Cambridge, to come to Norway and take dictations from him.39 Though Wittgenstein had no one to talk to during the early parts of World War I, his time at Olmütz—face-to-face with Engelmann and his friends—in 1916, just as new ideas were flooding in on him, was crucial to him. Wittgenstein did not have to, and did not ever, get the knack of addressing an anonymous audience in his work. He primarily addressed himself. He knew what problems he was facing, with what background he approached them. Or he addressed people who knew these things. When he was face to face he knew who his audience was, and where the problems lay. He could address concerns and objections as they arose. This was not a foolproof method—as his experiences proved—but it was the only hope. Wittgenstein did not naturally write for an anonymous audience; can we say: Wittgenstein could not write for an anonymous audience? In any case, that was the struggle that Wittgenstein always had.40 The challenge of writing the Tractatus for an anonymous audience was a challenge that Wittgenstein clearly failed, and he knew it. When Wittgenstein wrote, in the preface to the Tractatus: “Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it—or at least similar thoughts.—So it is not a textbook,” he was warning away the anonymous audience. A textbook is written for an anonymous audience. As Ramsey wrote to his mother, on September 20, 1923, concerning regular conversations with Wittgenstein about the Tractatus (CL, 186): “His idea of his book is not that by reading it anyone will understand his ideas, but that some day someone will think them out again for himself, and will derive great pleasure from finding in this book their exact expressions.” When Wittgenstein returned to philosophy and Cambridge in 1929, he mainly talked with Frank Ramsey and wrote for himself. So when he

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Chapter 1

had to justify his work, to the Trinity Council, or in writing, he sought to explain himself to a particular other person, in the context of that person’s concerns.41 After his return to philosophy, Wittgenstein had the reputation of being isolated and unwilling to share his ideas. But that was not quite true. Wittgenstein taught classes regularly, and participated freely in the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club for many years.42 He allowed anyone who wanted to, to attend his lectures—as long as they started at the beginning of the term, and stayed till the end—no visitors. Wittgenstein only needed to know with whom he was sharing his ideas. As he wrote to G. H. von Wright, who had inquired, near the end of Lent term, whether he could attend Wittgenstein’s lectures (March 9, 1939): I am, in my classes, doing my utmost to explain a very difficult matter to the students who have been attending my classes this term. I know that it is quite impossible for any one coming in in the middle, or at the end, of the term to get any idea of what we really are driving at. In fact he must necessarily get wrong ideas. . . . If I could, as many other people can, prepare my lectures in writing and then read them off in front of the class the presence of new people would not disturb me. But as I am unable to do this and have to think things out afresh while I’m talking I am very easily disturbed.43

And he even writes as a postscript to this letter: “If you like, come round to my rooms (at the above address) at 4.30 p.m. tomorrow. It may be easier for me to explain the matter to you when I see you than by writing.” And then von Wright comments on this: “I accepted Wittgenstein’s kind invitation and the conversation we then had may be said to have laid the foundation for our mutual friendship and understanding.” Of course, again, personal engagement was not a sufficient condition for understanding—only a necessary one. It was at the end of this very Easter term of lectures, which von Wright then attended in 1939, that Wittgenstein was noted as having concluded: “The seed I’m most likely to sow is a certain jargon.” Wittgenstein even gave some public lectures.44 But in each of these cases, he knew who he was talking to, and he ensured that there was opportunity for discussion. When, near the end of his life, he was asked to give the John Locke Lectures at Oxford, he declined—not on principle, but because “there would have been an audience of two hundred and no discussion. He wouldn’t do it.”45 Likely he could not bring himself to publish another book because: there would have been an audience of two thousand (or whatever) and no discussion. He wouldn’t do it. Discussion is essentially oral and face to face.

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17

Although Wittgenstein failed to write the Tractatus for an anonymous audience, his later attempts to write an anonymous book culminated in the Philosophical Investigations, which featured at least two voices.46 Wittgenstein was trying to find a way to preserve discussion even in a published format. Ultimately he would provide the discussion: “Almost the whole time I am writing conversations with myself. Things I say to myself tête-àtête [unter vier Augen].”47 This did not in the end provide the satisfaction of a face-to-face discussion with a known audience. But it was a step in that direction. It was an attempt to accommodate himself to the challenge of publishing a book.

2â•… Can We Understand Wittgenstein?

In the 1930s and into the 1940s Wittgenstein worked on a different approach to philosophical issues. Whereas in the Tractatus he had proposed a single account of the meaning of language—the so-called picture theory of meaning—which worked for descriptive language, and had recommended silence in many other realms in which language was employed, later he came to ascribe meaning to a wide variety of uses of language, seeing each as embodying its own “language game.” Instead of offering theories about various philosophical problems, he recommended getting a better view of the language and activities that gave rise to the problems, in the hope that the problems would dissolve. The book that gathered the distillate of this later approach to philosophical issues was edited by some of his students, published posthumously in 1953, and entitled in translation Philosophical Investigations. Unlike the brief, apparently tightly structured Tractatus, the Investigations is longer, more leisurely, and seemingly unstructured. The book consists of 693 consecutively numbered sections (ranging from a sentence to a page) in Part I, and 14 sections ranging from a half-page to 37 pages in Part II, amounting to 232 pages in all in English translation. In contrast to the oracular tone of the Tractatus, the Investigations includes 784 questions, of which only 110 are offered answers, and of these answers 70 are meant to be wrong answers.1 There are various reasons why we may have difficulty understanding Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. He recounts some in the preface to the Philosophical Investigations: After several attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts soon grew feeble if I tried to force them along a single track against their natural inclination.—And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. . . .

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Chapter 2

I make them public with misgivings. It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another—but, of course, it is not likely. . . . I should have liked to produce a good book. It has not turned out that way.

Some reasons have to do with him, some with the subject matter, and some with the audience. Wittgenstein never managed to put his remarks into a form that satisfied him. In the several and various drafts he made of a preface over the years, he sometimes blamed himself: His 1936 draft preface calls the book (at that stage) a “botched job [Flickwerk],” “shoddy work [Stümperei],” and “bad [schlecht]” (MS 152, 13). By August 1938, he had improved the book, or lightened up—only calling it “poor [dürftigen].”2 In any case, he never felt he succeeded (PI, preface): “I should have liked to produce a good book. It has not turned out that way.” Nevertheless, he confessed: “the time is past in which I could improve it.” In 1931 Wittgenstein wrote (C&V, 18/16): “I never more than half succeed in expressing what I want to express. Indeed not even so much, but perhaps only one tenth. That must mean something. My writing is often nothing but ‘stammering.’”3 And he had the same feeling much later when he wrote to Norman Malcolm on September 20, 1945: “my book is gradually nearing its final form, & if you’re a good boy & come to Cambridge I’ll let you read it. It’ll probably disappoint you. And the truth is: it’s pretty lousy. (Not that I could improve on it essentially if I tried for another 100 years.)”4 Yet, he kept trying for as many as five years after the January 1945 preface was written.5 Wittgenstein continues (to Malcolm): “This, however, doesn’t worry me.” And at some moments that indeed did not worry him (December 12, 1948; C&V, 76/87): “Are you a bad philosopher then, if what you write is hard to understand? If you were better, then you would make it easy to understand what is difficult.—But who says that is possible?!” However, in fact at other moments it did worry him. In a conversation with Drury that took place in 1949, Wittgenstein said: “It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?”6 Wittgenstein contemplated ways in which his prose was too limiting (1933 or 1934; C&V, 24/28): “I believe I summed up where I stand in relation to philosophy when I said: really one should write philosophy only as one writes a poem [dichten]. That, it seems to me, must reveal how far my thinking belongs to the present, the future, or the past. For I was acknowledging myself, with these words, to be someone who cannot quite do what he would like to be able to do.” In German, dichten means something

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21

broader than writing poetry, closer to writing in a literary or poetic fashion; Dichter does not simply mean poet, but a writer of fiction, or even a writerly writer.7 In both the 1938 draft and the 1945 published prefaces, Wittgenstein attributes the difficulty of being understood at least in part to the subject matter and his approach: “And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation” (PI, preface). Presumably Wittgenstein has in mind here the fact that his main concern is not to correct mistaken thoughts, but to counter individual temptations to see language wrongly. As Wittgenstein put it in 1938 (MS 120, 145r): “If I do not want to teach a more correct way of thinking, but rather a new movement of thought, then my goal is a ‘transvaluation of values’ and I think of Nietzsche, also insofar as in my view the philosopher should be a poet [Dichter].” Early on, Wittgenstein thought he could foresee all the problems he would encounter in this process (November 22, 1931; C&V, 18/25): Language sets everyone the same traps; it is an immense network of well kept wrong turnings. And hence we see one person after another walking down the same paths & we know in advance the point at which they will branch off, at which they will walk straight on without noticing the turning, etc., etc. So what I should do is erect signposts at all the junctions where there are wrong turnings, to help people past the danger points.

Any professor who has taught introductory philosophy several times has had exactly this experience, of virtually knowing just what responses will arise from students at which points in the discussion. In fact it is this predictability that makes it possible to use (prearranged) PowerPoint slides and have class discussion. Discussion regularly leads to the next slide. (Wittgenstein was then in his sixth term of teaching.) But as time wore on, Wittgenstein lost confidence in this approach. It is not easy to anticipate the right cases after all. Which problems should be addressed? After retiring from teaching Wittgenstein reflected (December 25, 1947; C&V, 65/74): It seems to me I am still a long way from understanding these things; from the point, that is, at which I know what I have to talk about, & what I don’t need to talk about.

And even if a case needs to be talked about now, how will it look later on? (December 15, 1942; C&V, 43/49): At present we are combating a trend. But this trend will die out, superseded by others. And then people will no longer understand our arguments against it; will not see why all that needed saying.

So Wittgenstein sees philosophical discussion as largely ad hominem.8

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Chapter 2

But there was always also for Wittgenstein another reason his book would not be understood—the audience. He thinks it is “not impossible,” although “not likely,” that the book will “bring light into one brain or another.” In the 1938 version this enlightenment was something for which he “does not dare to hope [wage nicht, zu hoffen].”9 What’s wrong with us? Well, we reside, as he says, in “the darkness of this time [der Finsternis dieser Zeit]” (PI, preface). It would be tempting to ascribe this pessimistic characterization to the fact that World War II was going on when he wrote that preface. But the fact is that he had been using similar terminology for years—in 1938 he referred to “our dark age [unserm dunkeln Zeitalter].”10 And Wittgenstein’s friend Drury specifically states: “These words . . . must not be taken as the expression of a temporary petulant pessimism. They are the expression of a lifelong conviction concerning all his writing.”11 Wittgenstein meant something more general by his concerns about this time or our age. Wittgenstein was born in 1889 into one of the richest and most cultured families in Central Europe. This family in which Wittgenstein grew up apparently felt that European culture had already come to an end in the 1840s.12 And Wittgenstein himself considered that he belonged to an era that had vanished with the death of the composer Robert Schumann (1810–1856) (October 10, 1929; C&V, 2/4): I often wonder whether my cultural ideal is a new one, i.e. contemporary, or whether it comes from the time of Schumann. At least it strikes me as a continuation of that ideal, though not the continuation that actually followed it then. That is to say, the second half of the 19th Century has been left out.

Somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century there was an important change into the contemporary era, of which Wittgenstein did not feel a part.13 Wittgenstein’s understanding of history, and his consequent self-understanding in relation to his times, was deeply influenced by Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), who in 1918 published The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abenlandes). This book, expanded to a second volume in 1922, and revised in 1923, became a bestseller in postwar Europe. Wittgenstein made numerous references to it in 1930–1931, and acknowledged Spengler as one of his most noteworthy influences. In 1931, reflecting on his greatest influences, Wittgenstein listed Spengler along with Frege, Russell, and Sraffa—a list to which he only then added Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Kraus, Loos, and Weininger (C&V, 19/16). Wittgenstein very likely read Spengler while he was living in Austria in the 1920s, before he returned to Cambridge in 1929.14

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23

According to Spengler, cultures grow, flower, and deteriorate naturally, according to their own internal form, much as a human being does. Spengler studied three cultures, which he termed the Apollonian (GrecoRoman), the Magian (Judaism, Byzantium, Islam), and the Faustian (Western). A culture dies when it has exhausted all of its possibilities. But this sort of internal process does not translate into any sort of overall progress from era to era: the 19th and 20th centuries, hitherto looked on as the highest point of an ascending straight line of world-history, are in reality a stage of life which may be observed in every Culture that has ripened to its limit. . . . The future of the West is not a limitless tending upwards and onwards for all time towards our present ideals, but a single phenomenon of history, strictly limited as to form and duration, which covers a few centuries.15

Our own Western era is supposed to have begun around 1000 with the soaring vaults and spires of Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, reached maturity in the Baroque period of Bach, begun to decline with the rococo refinements and daring philosophical speculation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and plunged into deterioration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The maturity of an era, which Spengler called “culture [Kultur],” was equated with organism and religion. The end of an era, which Spengler called “civilization [Zivilisation],” was equated with mechanism and irreligion. Spengler writes: For every Culture has its own Civilization. . . . The Civilization is the inevitable destiny of the Culture. . . . Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable. They are a conclusion, the thing-become succeeding the thing-becoming, death following life, rigidity following expansion. . . . The transition from Culture to Civilization was accomplished for the Classical world in the fourth, for the Western in the nineteenth century.16

This period of deterioration, both in the Roman Empire and in the modern West, Spengler saw as characterized by eclectic art, desiccated thought, politics as a facade for the power of money, mobs of people living in large cities, and unending warfare. Not only does Spengler see history as dividing up into these three eras (Apollonian/Greco-Roman, Magian, and Faustian/Western), each involving growth, flourishing, and decline; but he sees parallels between the corresponding stages of each era. So there will be similarities between the culture of the ancient world and the modern world; so too between the civilization of the ancient world and of the modern world. The “decline of the West” will in certain ways parallel the decline of the classical age.17

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This contrast between culture and civilization was fundamental to Wittgenstein’s understanding of his own times. Wittgenstein articulated this contrast most clearly in a draft he wrote for a preface to a manuscript on which he was working in 1930 (November 6 or 7, 1930; C&V, 6/8–9): This book is written for those who are in sympathy with the spirit [Geist] in which it is written. This spirit is, I believe, different from that of the prevailing European and American civilization. The spirit of this civilization the expression of which is the industry, architecture, music, of present day fascism & socialism is a spirit that is alien [fremder] and uncongenial to the author. This is not a value judgement. It is not as though I did not know that what today represents itself as architecture is not architecture & not as though he did not approach what is called modern music with the greatest mistrust (without understanding its language), but the disappearance of the arts does not justify a disparaging judgement on a whole segment of humanity. . . . Even if it is clear to me then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value but simply of certain means of expressing this value, still the fact remains that I contemplate the current of European civilization without sympathy, without understanding its aims if any.

Wittgenstein saw the era up through Schumann as the flowering of Western culture, and the time since, his and our own time, as deteriorating Western civilization. Wittgenstein, however, considered himself to be a representative of that lost era of culture. This is closely connected with the numerous disparaging remarks Wittgenstein made about modern arts. Spengler writes: The present is a civilized, emphatically not a cultured time, and ipso facto a great number of life-capacities fall out as impossible. . . . We are a civilized, not Gothic or Rococo, people; we have to reckon with the hard cold facts of a late life, to which the parallel is to be found not in Pericles’ Athens but in Caesar’s Rome. Of great painting or great music there can no longer be, for Western people, any question. Their architectural possibilities have been exhausted these hundred years. Only extensive possibilities are left to them.18

Since Wittgenstein identified with and felt grounded in this lost culture, he commonly expressed the feeling that few—the remnant—would understand him. In effect Wittgenstein was an exile—not from his home-place so much as from his home-time, his cultural home.19 So an important reason his audience is unlikely to understand his book is that we are part of the civilization of the deteriorating West, while he was writing from the earlier culture of the flourishing West. As Stephen Toulmin, one of Wittgenstein’s students in the 1940s, put it: “If there was an intellectual gulf between us and him, it was not because his philosophical methods, style of exposition and subject matter were (as we supposed) unique and unparalleled. It was a sign, rather, of a culture clash.”20 These

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25

two eras have a difference in spirit, and the right spirit is essential to the understanding of his work.21 Spengler had a lot to say about the differences of spirit between culture and civilization, and Wittgenstein articulated some of them in the draft of the 1930 preface. But for much of this, it is hard to see what it would have to do with an understanding of Wittgenstein’s investigations. This is a large issue, about which I have only narrow insights. Nevertheless I will pursue them for the opening they create into this problem. We do not have to accept, or even find plausible, Spengler’s philosophy of history to be able to see its influence on Wittgenstein. Nor do we need to understand why Wittgenstein found it to be helpful for understanding his own situation in the world. He himself was skeptical “about details” in Spengler.22 It was the broad strokes that resonated with Wittgenstein and helped him place his sense of alienation. So, to proceed, what is it about the spirit of our times that makes it difficult to understand Wittgenstein’s philosophy? In Part I of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein provides us with a running commentary (of well over a hundred points) on what produces the philosophical confusions we get into, and what the problems are with appreciating his resolutions. A survey of Part I of the Investigations tells us that philosophical problems arise or remain because of: 1.╇ What forces itself on us, holds us captive, demands an answer, must be, leads us, we can’t help, or no one would say (14 times); 2.╇ What we are tempted, seduced, bewitched, or dazzled by (19 times); 3.╇ What suggests itself, strikes us, occurs to us, or impressions we are under (7 times); 4.╇ How things look to us (2 times); 5.╇ What we find surprising, convincing, senseless, ludicrous, sensible, or matter-of-course (8 times); 6.╇ Our compulsions, needs, urges, wants, tendencies, inclinations, expectations, or prejudices (28 times); 7.╇ What we notice, can get ourselves to think, can be satisfied with, only think of, overlook, don’t realize, fail to see, or forget (14 times); 8.╇ What we would like (6 times); 9.╇ What we are committed to, choose, decide, allow, or refuse (6 times); and 10.╇ How we look at or represent things (5 times). These tendencies in us can apply to a great variety of issues, leading to many different philosophical problems. The sum of such tendencies could

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be said to constitute a temperament—a spirit of the times. To the extent that tendencies such as these give rise to philosophical problems, a dissolution of the problems will be more of an attitudinal than an intellectual matter. Let us look at two specific philosophical problems, one for which Wittgenstein’s diagnosis and treatment have seemed somewhat successful, and another for which they have seemed relatively unsuccessful. Somewhat Successful: “What Is x?”—Definition Socrates, in Plato’s early dialogues, regularly asks “What is x?” where x may, for example, be piety (in the Euthyphro), virtue (Meno), or knowledge (Theaetetus—not, however, an early dialogue). We construe this as a request for a definition, yet his interlocutors initially respond only with examples or instances of the term. A pious action, says Euthyphro, is “what I am doing now” (5d). Socrates always responds by pushing the interlocutor for a definition that provides what we would call an essence—a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the concept—what it is that underlies the instances, in virtue of which they are instances of the concept in question (6d): “Bear in mind then that I did not bid you tell me one or two of the many pious actions but that form itself that makes all pious actions pious.” The interlocutors generally come to see what he is looking for, and offer some essence that turns out to be either too broad, or too narrow, or both. Discussion proceeds until, usually, the interlocutor tires or pleads other obligations (15e). The dialogue generally ends before a satisfactory definition is found.23 Socrates, in these early dialogues, does not imagine that these concepts might fail to have, and thus not need, such an essence. Socrates “overlooks” the possibility (see diagnosis 7 above) that the concept might lack such an essence. After all, if you think about it, not all concepts can have essences of this sort—short of circularity or infinite regress—so one should always keep in mind that a concept may lack an essence.24 This line of response is Wittgenstein’s well-known critique of essentialism regarding the unity of a concept. He tries to reduce our expectations for what is a satisfying resolution of Socrates’ question—What is x? In the Blue Book, dictated in 1933–1934, Wittgenstein warns that (BB, 17) “what makes it difficult for us to take this line of investigation is our craving for generality” and our “contemptuous attitude toward the particular case” (18). In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein addresses this issue in connection with games.25 Wittgenstein sees Socrates’ demand for an essence

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for a concept as a compulsion that holds us captive (diagnosis 1 above): “There must be something common” (§66). To escape from this prejudice he recommends: “don’t think, but look!” Thinking leaves us beholden to the temptations of our times; looking brings us back to Earth. Then we see only “a complicated network of similarities.” As he said in a lecture on June 1, 1936: We might solve certain puzzles by pointing out that we mustn’t look for one common property to be found in all cases: a kinship may be there, but with no common property to which you can point.26

This kinship was what he called a “family resemblance.” Some have responded to Wittgenstein by trying to offer especially careful definitions of “game.”27 Even if this were successful, it would not undermine Wittgenstein’s point. (Here, I wish in his lecture he hadn’t said that we “mustn’t look for” but rather that we needn’t insist on finding.) Wittgenstein surely admits that some terms are definable in essentialist terms. In the Blue Book (25) he offers the “defining” criterion of angina as having “the bacillus so-and-so in his blood.” And no one could doubt that the definition of a triangle is a closed plane figure whose sides form three angles. Let us call such terms with essential definitions “technical terms.” Wittgenstein does not object to the existence of technical terms. He objects to the Socratic prejudice (diagnosis 6) that all terms are technical terms. After all, there is no way for Wittgenstein to show that a particular term is indefinable. At most there could be inductive evidence for such a conclusion.28 Wittgenstein sums up his position in dictations to Waismann for Schlick in the early 1930s: I can characterize my standpoint no better than by saying that it is the antithetical standpoint to the one occupied by Socrates in the Platonic dialogues. For if I were asked what knowledge is, I would enumerate instances of knowledge and add the words ‘and similar things’.29

In a contemporary typescript, after a similar discussion of Socrates’ essentialist expectation, and his own satisfaction with enumeration and kinship, he remarks parenthetically: “(I’m making it easier and easier for myself in philosophy. But the difficulty is to make it easier for oneself and yet to remain precise.)”30 “Easier” by having reduced expectations for what is required of a legitimate concept. A voice in the Philosophical Investigations complains (§65): “So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache.” Wittgenstein’s parenthetical remark, that he was making it easier and easier for himself in philosophy, anticipates Russell’s later vitriolic remark:

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“The later Wittgenstein . . . seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would have made such an activity unnecessary.”31 But Russell then goes on to concede that the difference here does not show Wittgenstein to be mistaken, but rather shows a difference of temperament: “I do not for one moment believe that the doctrine which has these lazy consequences is true. I realize, however, that I have an overpoweringly strong bias against it, for, if it is true, philosophy is, at best, a slight help to lexicographers, and at worst, an idle tea-time amusement.” We don’t have to agree with Russell’s final claims to recognize that the issue is a matter of temperament, and that Russell’s temperament is very different from Wittgenstein’s. These are clearly matters of choice, not perception, about which, of course, there can be discussion—but they may well ultimately come down to a matter of temperament (1931; C&V, 20/17–8): “If it is sometimes said that (someone’s) philosophy is a matter of temperament, there is some truth in this. A preference for certain comparisons is something we call a matter of temperament & far more disagreements rest on this than appears at first sight.” Note that in the continuation of Wittgenstein’s parenthetical remark he does not renounce precision, as Russell might have thought, but reconceives what precision is. In another context, Wittgenstein puts the point like this (PI, Part II, 227/239): “What is most difficult here is to express this indefiniteness correctly and without distortion.”32 What, if anything, could these considerations have to do with the “spirit of our times”? There is no good single answer to this question. The most important point is that the diagnosis and treatment that Wittgenstein finds are attitudinal and not cognitive. They have to do with our needs and the direction of our attention. It is plausible to say that the difference between Socrates and Wittgenstein is a spiritual difference, and not simply an intellectual one. Is it also plausible to say that Socrates represents the spirit of our “civilized” times, from which Wittgenstein dissents, and that Wittgenstein represents the spirit of an earlier cultural time? Perhaps. Spengler saw the movement from ancient Greece into the Roman Empire as a transition from culture to civilization. And he saw Socrates as the beginning of that deterioration: In the Late-Classical, we find . . . the long death-struggle of the Apollonian soul. In the interval from Socrates—who was the spiritual father of the Stoa and in whom the first signs of inward impoverishment and city-intellectualism became visible—to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, every existence-ideal underwent transvaluation.33

In Spengler’s view, Socrates’ position was in a civilization (or the brink of one), as is ours. In a parallel fashion, he saw the movement of the Faustian

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era into the late nineteenth century as a transition from culture to civilization. Wittgenstein strongly identified with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), whom Spengler clearly positioned in the earlier cultural portion of the Faustian era (named after Goethe’s famous character). And for Wittgenstein, Goethe’s morphological investigations offered a model for his own nonessentialist approach to concepts: “Our thought here marches with certain views of Goethe’s, which he expressed in the Metamorphosis of Plants.”34 In particular, Goethe had the idea of a basic form of a plant, with which actual plants could be associated by means of links of similarity. Thus Wittgenstein could see himself as advocating what one might call a “cultural” approach to concepts, and in doing so opposing a “civilized” one. And, quite apart from Spengler’s eras, one could see the Socratic prejudice as appropriate to a sort of modern scientific spirit of precision, which Wittgenstein opposes from within a different scientific spirit (Goethe certainly saw himself as a scientist), or an earlier, different spirit in any case. In the Blue Book, Wittgenstein specifically draws this connection between essentialism and “our preoccupation with the method of science. . . . Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does” (18). We can criticize Wittgenstein’s presentation of his ideas, as he himself does, but we have to also recognize what it is in us that leads us to be unreceptive to those ideas. The synopsis of obstacles that I gave earlier was in a rough order—from those things in which we are clearly or nearly passive (1–8), to those things in which we are clearly or nearly voluntary agents (9–10). The first several kinds of obstacles at least have a sort of psychological inertia to them that cannot obviously or easily be cast off through simple choice. I believe they are much of what Wittgenstein refers to as the spirit “which informs the vast stream of European and American civilization in which all of us stand.” They are characteristic of a worldview. They embody a certain kind of temperament and sensibility. Since Wittgenstein saw these common characteristics as obstacles to a healthy view of things, he regretted them, and saw them as part of the “darkness of this time.” For the most part, they seem to be the kinds of things that will change “only with time,” as we say. The last few kinds of obstacles, on the other hand, admit of more voluntary adjustment. They offer more opportunity to intervene and change things. Yet they are less prevalent and operative than the earlier obstacles. Nonetheless, they provide Wittgenstein with an in-road to change. And they help to remind us of the ways in which the earlier obstacles may be

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less than inevitable. They are the source of the possibility that the book will “bring light into one or another brain.” Consider some examples of how Wittgenstein does, in general, proceed: a.╇ He points things out to us that we overlook, don’t realize, fail to see, didn’t notice, or didn’t think of. Our views seem to grow from considering too narrow a range of cases. We tend to overgeneralize, where a wider range of examples would influence how things look to us. “A main cause of philosophical diseases—a one-sided diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with only one kind of example” (PI, §593). b.╇ He reminds us of things we forgot. The philosopher is especially prone to forgetting how language is used in ordinary contexts. “The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose” (PI, §127). And: “What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (PI, §116). c.╇ He offers alternative ways of looking at things, often through a synopsis of ordinary usage: “A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview [übersehen] of the use of our words. . . . The concept of a surveyable representation [übersichtlichen Darstellung] is of fundamental significance for us.”35 d.╇ He tries to reduce our expectations for what is a satisfying resolution of a question. This is what he does in his treatment of essentialism about concepts (and his discussion of causation, to be considered in chapter 8). I offer Wittgenstein’s diagnosis and treatment of essentialism as somewhat successful. The diagnosis covered phenomena from categories 1, 6, and 7. The latter categories especially seemed amenable to treatment by reminding us of other possibilities. I would not pretend to know how many philosophers are convinced by Socrates, and how many by Wittgenstein. But presumably Wittgenstein has made some in-roads. Relatively Unsuccessful: The “Inverted Spectrum” Consider another example of the diagnosis and treatment of a philosophical problem, Wittgenstein’s discussion of the possibility of an inverted spectrum (e.g., PI, §§272–279). The possibility of spectral inversion seems first to have been raised, rather briefly, in Plato’s Theaetetus (153e–154a): Socrates:  Let us follow what we stated a moment ago, and posit that there is nothing which is, in itself, one thing. According to this theory, black or white or any other color will turn out to have come into being through the impact of the eye upon

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the appropriate motion; and what we naturally call a particular color is neither that which impinges nor that which is impinged upon, but something which has come into being between the two, and which is private to the individual percipient.—Or would you be prepared to insist that every color appears to a dog, or to any other animal, the same as it appears to you? Theaetetus:  No, I most certainly shouldn’t. Socrates:  Well, and do you even feel sure that anything appears to another human being like it appears to you? Wouldn’t you be much more disposed to hold that it doesn’t appear the same even to yourself because you never remain like yourself? Theaetetus:  Yes, that seems to me nearer the truth than the other.

This is a passage that Wittgenstein was certainly familiar with.36 Wondering about the possibility of an inverted spectrum apparently comes rather naturally to many people. The possibility seems especially interesting because it seems impossible to tell whether it happens or not. Verificationists, those who think something cannot be so unless there could be evidence of its being so, would take this impossibility of telling as undermining the possibility of being. But most people are not verificationists, and neither is Wittgenstein—at least in the mid-1930s and beyond. Wittgenstein argues extensively against the possibility of a private language—a language about one’s private sensations—but many see this as tangential: That we couldn’t talk about it doesn’t seem fatal to its possible existence. Private experience just seems obvious to some people—whether they can talk about it or not, whether they can verify it or not; we just feel so closely acquainted with our private experiences. Wittgenstein is concerned to distinguish between experiences and private experiences—the former being what all of us have when our senses are working. We have experiences and often do compare them—to find out, say, whether it “looks the same to you as it does to me.” But this sense of “experience” doesn’t satisfy those wondering about private experience, for private experience is what supposedly lies behind any description, inexpressible by ourselves and inaccessible to others.37 As Frege put it: no one has another’s idea, only his own, and no one ever knows how far his idea— e.g., of red—coincides with another’s; for I cannot express what is peculiar to the idea I associate with the word “red.”38

Wittgenstein elaborates: “For to say that he has a private object means that we shall regard no description that he may give of it as really telling us what it’s like.”39 We might say that private experience would be transdescriptive experience. It is well known that Wittgenstein offers a critique of the notion of private experience, and hence of the possibility of the inverted spectrum,

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which would allow that we could have undetectably different private color experiences. But it is less clear exactly how this critique proceeds. The alleged possibility of an inverted spectrum is not directly discussed extensively by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations. But he does discuss it more extensively in other works as well as in lectures, and the discussion of private sensations and private language in the Investigations is directly relevant. The difficulty of understanding Wittgenstein’s critique of private experience comes from two main sources: our commitment to private, transdescriptive experience seems to run deep, and also there are various different and unsystematic ways that Wittgenstein tries to loosen this commitment. Talk of “commitment” here should remind us that part of what is at stake is attitudinal. The issue again is not a purely cognitive one. Wittgenstein’s first extensive discussion of these issues occurs in connection with his course of lectures at Cambridge in 1935–1936. On May 25, 1936, Rush Rhees reports Wittgenstein as saying: We are tempted to use the grammar which we use for a word designating a physical object—we are tempted to use this grammar for words that designate impressions. In our primitive language most substantives relate to some physical object or another. When then we begin to talk of impressions, we have a temptation to use the same kind of grammar. . . . Our craving is to make the grammar of the sense datum similar to the grammar of the physical body. That was why the term “sense datum” was introduced—it being the “private object” corresponding to the “public object.”40

As he puts a related point (about pain) in a lecture from his last course: “It seems to people unavoidable to hypostatize a feeling.”41 And in 1949 he wrote (LW2, 43): “The main difficulty arises from our imagining the experience (the pain, for instance) as a thing [Ding].” So the experience is itself pictured as an object.42 This then facilitates the idea that the experiences themselves could be compared—not in practice, but theoretically. In practice we compare experiences by describing them—but the puzzle comes from the thought that these are transdescriptive. There is more to them than can be described, which could be brought out—theoretically— by what I would think if I “had” “what you have” (or what God would think if God could “look into our minds”).43 Once we have pictured private experience in this way, it may be too late for Wittgenstein to do anything (PI, §308): “(The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent.)” For it is not possible to refute a picture. As he says in a somewhat different context (§115): “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” Or: “I cannot

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say this is wrong—but it is misleading.”44 So how might he try to dislodge (or, escape from) the picture? Instead of questioning the picture—which is, after all, only a picture— Wittgenstein decides to question its use. In preparatory notes he writes: “Picture we use here. This picture not questioned but its application.”45 The picture is used to motivate the notion of making a comparison—between how it looks to me, and how it looks to you. For example, we imagine taking how-it-looks-to-you, and presenting that to me to see if it is just the same as how-it-looks-to-me. “It is as if we detached the colour-impression from the object, like a membrane. (This ought to arouse our suspicions.)”46 But how does this imaginary “presentation” work? “Let us imagine a direct transfer of the experience.—But now what is our criterion for the experience’s really having been transferred? ‘Well, he simply has the same as I have.’—But how does he ‘have’ it?”47 Here Wittgenstein alludes to the difference between identity conditions for physical objects, and identity conditions for experiences. If we were comparing physical objects, he would have it if it were spatiotemporally continuous with my object—that’s what is required for numerical identity of physical objects.48 But since we are not comparing physical objects, what we are left with (for identity conditions) is qualitative indiscernibility.49 Yet this is precisely what fails in this case, since if I were to describe how-it-looks-to-him differently from the way he does, then the descriptions differ. So there are no grounds for supposing that the “transfer” actually succeeded.50 In what sense am I describing (the) what-looked-blue-to-him if I’m calling it yellow? Yet the believer in private experience and the possibility of inverted spectrum might go back to the original picture and simply insist that it suffices: There is no need to give criteria of identity for experiences. After all, you can’t demand criteria of identity for everything (just like you can’t define everything). We can just take the claim of identity as primitive: What I mean is this! I know what I am referring to, and you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. “The great difficulty here,” Wittgenstein concedes (PI, §374), “is not to represent the matter as if there were something one couldn’t do. As if there really were an object from which I derive its description, but I were unable to show it to anyone.—And the best that I can propose is that we should yield to the temptation to use this picture, but then investigate how the application of the picture goes.” So Wittgenstein tries going along with this idea—perhaps as a sort of indirect proof (PI, §293): “Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a ‘beetle’. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and

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everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.—Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box.” So he accepts the picture and hypostatizes the “object” quite literally. From there he adds: “One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.” This points to a continuation of the argument along the lines of whether we could consistently use such a private object to “justify” our expressions. In what was published as Part II of the Philosophical Investigations he tries to undermine this idea (207/218): “Always get rid of the idea of the private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you.” Here he is questioning how this object would function in its own private realm, without a public check. This is familiar territory to those versed in the rule-following discussion. To make a long story short, the opponent can be stubborn, as above, and insist that my memory is checkable just in the sense that if someone else were to experience the same thing, the person would agree with me. This is what philosophers call a “bare counterfactual,” which may be unattractive to some, but is in the end a matter of what one is willing to accept—what one can stomach. But Wittgenstein immediately goes on to say: “But suppose the word ‘beetle’ had a use in this people’s language?” Here is another supposition designed for rejection (as indicated by the question mark). “If so, it would not be used as the name of a thing.” And this points to several further remarks in this direction. The opponent wants to call it a sensation, but (PI, §261) “what reason have we for calling ‘S’ the sign of a sensation? For ‘sensation’ is a word in our common language.” So perhaps we might just say: I have a certain feeling, or a certain something. But: “how do you know that you are allowed to call it a feeling or even a something? For the word ‘something’ has a public meaning, if it means anything at all.”51 So then: “if he says ‘I may be wrong about the name but I know what I have’—does he even know what ‘to have’ means in that use?”52 But at least: “it may be taken to be a statement about a private world. . . . We know that it is private, but how do we know that it is a world?” Wittgenstein’s real interlocutor here, Robert Thouless, follows this by saying: “It was late, and I failed to understand what he meant.”53 Thouless was politely expressing the anguish Wittgenstein himself more articulately put as (PI, §261): “So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.” Indeed. And Wittgenstein insists on driving home his point even here: “such a sound is an expression only as it occurs in a particular language-game, which should now be described.” But he is now being drowned out by that inarticulate sound.

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So if we follow Wittgenstein this far, as many do not, he goes on: “The thing in the box has no place in the language game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty.” Here we have the zombies so feared by functionalists.54 “No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.” The question whether there is a language game that is played with private sensations is ambiguous. Wittgenstein clearly believes there is no private language game (one plays with oneself) because of the problems of privately following rules. And although there is a public language game about our sensations, this could not be about our private sensations. Yet we might wonder whether philosophers haven’t created a public language game about private sensations—the language game of philosophy. This is a larger issue, which raises parallel possibilities for legitimating other “philosophical” uses about which Wittgenstein is skeptical—uses of “knowledge” or “free will” that go beyond the ordinary language games with these terms. Why don’t philosophers’ uses of these terms in philosophical discussions provide all the legitimation that is needed? Wittgenstein tends to “protect” certain realms of discourse and life from critique by “ghettoizing” them into their own language games—religion, for example, or a particular religion, has a legitimacy and dignity of its own, separate from and perhaps invulnerable to the truths of science. Couldn’t this be done for philosophy and the extraordinary claims of philosophers? Instead of seeing philosophical statements as illegitimate extensions of ordinary language, why not see them as a separate set of statements having their own dignity and momentum? Thus, philosophers might engage in a language game about private experience, even if ordinary speakers do not. It is noteworthy that Wittgenstein never considers that option, for this or for other cases. Perhaps he just lacks the sympathy for philosophy that he has for religion. Hence he has no desire to protect it. Perhaps the same moves could be made, and would have been by someone of a different temperament from Wittgenstein. But there is a deeper reason beyond lack of sympathy or mere neglect. Although there would be no objection in principle to acknowledging a language game of philosophy (or, a language game among philosophers about private experience), it would not fulfill the philosophers’ expectations. Philosophers who theorize about private experience want to be theorizing about people’s experiences; philosophers who theorize about relativism want to be theorizing about people’s moral judgments. Yet the protective insulation that is provided by a language game of philosophy undermines these “aboutness” connections. The philosopher not only wants to say this

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or that about private experience, but also wants the statements to have a certain status outside the language game of philosophy—wants it to be about the world that ordinary people discuss and experience. Once philosophy is set off as a separate language game, it would be less confusing to have philosophers discuss “etavirp ecneirepxe.” Then they could say what they like, and there would be no danger of supposing it had anything to do with nonphilosophers. Indeed, this seems to be the point of Wittgenstein’s refusal to allow us to call private experience a “sensation,” or a “feeling,” or a “something” that I “have,” or even that it concerns a “world,” because all of these words play roles in other language games, and talk of private experience has failed to earn the right to use any of these words. So Wittgenstein leaves the talk with nothing but “an inarticulate sound.” That’s fine, but if it is an “expression” of anything, then the language game in which it occurs needs to be spelled out—without these other terms. So the philosopher may be left with a language game, but not one that’s worth playing. And this route leads to the embarrassing admission that philosophers only talk to each other—and the rest of the world can safely ignore them. The idea of the privacy of one’s experience “never crosses your mind” in ordinary, spontaneous contexts, but only with “philosophical intentions.” Yet there is a “temptation” to distinguish between the public color and the private impression—“surely that makes sense!” We see that Wittgenstein is concerned with much more than ideas; he is concerned with how the ideas are taken. Illusions about the inverted spectrum arise because of what thoughts cross our minds, what distinctions we are tempted to make, and what (apparently) makes sense to us. And he realized these were not easy to change—certainly not just by presenting counterarguments. Looking back over the remarks that Wittgenstein makes trying to counteract the picture of the private experience, it is striking how the language resonates with a noncognitive construal of the problems: The temptation to use the notion of ‘identical’ (PI, §254) (type 2) Forgetting that naming a sensation requires stage-setting (PI, §257) (type 7) Being inclined to say something which gives no information (PI, §298) (type 6) The grammar which tries to force itself on us here (PI, §304) (type 1) The picture stands in the way of our seeing (PI, §305) (type 1) What commits us to a certain way of looking at the matter (PI, §308) (type 9)

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An analogy tends to delude us55 (type 2) A question suggests itself56 (type 3) Craving to make one grammar similar to another57 (type 2) And in treating these problems he speaks of: Calling to mind the differences between language games (PI, §290) (type a) Paying attention to the way a word comes58 (type a) Reminding yourself of the use59 (type b) Making me see things in a new way60 (type c) (I have listed only a single instance of each phenomenon, but many other instances could be accumulated.) Anyone who has taught about Wittgenstein on the problem of the inverted spectrum to actual students (as opposed to journal readers) knows the obstacles to understanding that Wittgenstein faces. The attractive power of the picture is enormous. And it is impossible to pin down the attractiveness in one way so that it can be addressed, for there are many ways to succumb to temptation. The genuine and deep difficulty of issues surrounding private experience was expressed by Wittgenstein in ongoing conversations he had with Robert Thouless in 1941: “This is terribly hard, Thouless. I’m sorry. I have thought over all this for years. I have made mistakes and forgotten them and made the same mistakes again. It is now as if we had ploughed furrows in different parts of a field. There is a lot left to do.”61 It is near the end of the discussion of private sensation in the Investigations that Wittgenstein presents this famous image (§309): “What is your aim in philosophy?—To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.” It seems we are to imagine the philosophically perplexed person as a fly caught in a bottle. The bottle is presumably inverted, so that the fly is obsessively flying up to the light against the glass, never able to escape. This recalls Wittgenstein’s image of being stuck in a room with an unnoticed door that is behind one.62 But presumably showing the fly a “way” is as problematic as herding cats. How can he do it? The answer, and what Wittgenstein meant by this image, is explained by him in comments that he made in reply to a paper by Yorick Smythies on “Understanding”: Cf. the fly catcher. If you want to let him out, you’d have to surround this by something dark. As long as there is light there, the fly can never do it. If I am puzzled philosophically, I immediately darken all that which seems to me light, and try frantically to think of something entirely different. The point is, you can’t get out as long as you are fascinated. The only thing to do is to go to an example where nothing fascinates me.63

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So the fly is shown the way out by blocking the light that obsesses it, so that only the downward indirectly lighted direction (and escape) remains attractive. This shows how much the process is a negative one, and also how much the process depends on knowing what happens to obsess the fly, and how to redirect the fly’s attention. He continues: First of all, it is not at all clear that this will help every fly. What happens to work with me doesn’t work with him (Prof. Moore)—works with me now, and may not work with me tomorrow. There are always new ways of looking at the matter. I constantly find new puzzles (I’ve thought about this for years, constantly ploughed these fields.)

I think it is fair to say that Wittgenstein’s treatment of the possibility of the inverted spectrum has not worked on many people: It has been relatively unsuccessful. Wittgenstein construes this failure as a case of misunderstanding. In his discussions with Thouless, when Thouless continues to want to talk about “what colours looked like,” Wittgenstein says: “Oh, there is an awful misunderstanding between us. A terrible misunderstanding.”64 Is there any way to construe the attitudinal differences between Wittgenstein and defenders of the possibility of the inverted spectrum as connected with the differences between a cultural and a civilizational attitude? Doing so is bound to seem like a stretch, and Wittgenstein nowhere casts this issue in these particular terms. But consider this way of construing the debate: The defender of private sensations feels a need to carry the justification of our behavior further than is necessary. Just as the statement that there is a nickel in my pocket is justified by a nickel’s being in my pocket, “we are inclined to say that for the statement that I have a toothache there is a certain justification, which consists in my having a toothache; and we say that this justification is private.”65 Wittgenstein has two points to make about this—first, that it can’t succeed: The point is that an essentially private object can’t justify the use of a word, neither for the others nor for him. The private object does not only not enter the public game but it can’t enter a private game either.66

and second, that the lack of justification is not a problem: We are inclined to say there must be a reason when there is no reason. If I say “How do you know that you see red?”—there is no justification. But then the temptation is to say: “So all it comes to is that you say it (say the words).”67

This, however, leaves most people puzzled as to the differences between the normal case, pretending, and stoically concealing:

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The question is just: “Do I distinguish between having a toothache and moaning, not having a toothache and moaning, and having a toothache and not moaning?” I should answer, Yes, I do distinguish. But can you ask any more of me?68

This is the crucial challenge: Can you ask any more of me? Wittgenstein wants to end the chain of justification here—no further question is necessary (BB, 73): He looks for a justification of his description where there is none. (Just as in the case when a man believes that the chain of reasons must be endless. . . ).

This does not mean that our expressions are arbitrary—only that they are not all “justified” (PI, §289): “When I say ‘I am in pain’ I am at any rate justified before myself.”—What does that mean? Does it mean: “If someone else could know what I am calling ‘pain,’ he would admit that I am using the word correctly”? To use a word without a justification does not mean to use it wrongfully.69

And here we can see a parallel to the case of defining concepts—to use a term without an essentialist definition does not mean to use it wrongfully, or arbitrarily. So there is a difference, in both cases, as to how far one pushes questions of justification. Whereas scientifically minded people might think that such questions are to be pushed as far as possible, Wittgenstein is willing to say: “But can you ask any more of me?” In a sense it is a matter of taste where to end the process. Such tendencies are part of the spirit of the times. Thus, it is very unlikely that we will understand and appreciate Wittgenstein’s work unless we have the right temperament and sensibility. For most people this is hopeless. But for those determined to understand, it will require work on oneself: “What has to be overcome is not a difficulty of the intellect, but of the will. Work on philosophy is . . . actually more a kind of work on oneself. On one’s own conception. On the way one sees things. (And what one demands of them.)”70 According to Drury, “Wittgenstein once shocked Moore by saying that he thought character was more important in philosophy than intelligence.”71 Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) was a student and friend of Wittgenstein’s beginning in 1939, when he was studying at Cambridge. Upon his return to Cambridge after the war Malcolm attended classes and met with Wittgenstein one afternoon a week to read, line by line, the manuscript of what was to become Part I of the Investigations. Of these meetings Malcolm says: “Wittgenstein once said to me, ‘The reason I am doing this is so there will be at least one person who will understand my book when it

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is published.’”72 Assuming that Wittgenstein did say this, to me it shows a temporary deviation from by far his most usual line—that the problems are not cognitive ones that could be explained away, but temperamental ones that would require a different kind of work, or a different era altogether.73 On the other hand, this approach does show the importance of ad hominem treatment—directed at the problems of a particular individual. In any case the meetings did not continue to have this specific focus for long. It seems that it was just this attention to Malcolm’s own philosophical questions that soon led away from a focus on Wittgenstein’s manuscript. As Malcolm concludes: “our discussions became more free.” But if the obstacles to understanding Wittgenstein pervade the spirit of our times, how could anyone now understand him? And, for that matter, how could he understand himself?74 The answer to the latter question is that Wittgenstein saw himself as an exile from that earlier culture. Though he lived in our civilization, he did so without apparently acquiring the character of the civilization.75 This raises the possibility that others have a built-in or acquired resistance as well.76

3â•… What Is Understanding?

In Wittgenstein’s later work he reminds us that understanding is not simply a mental feeling (of understanding). Certain feelings, such as feelings of familiarity and confidence, may often be present when we understand something—he calls them “more or less characteristic accompaniments” (PI, §152); so too, certain thoughts, such “now I get it.” But they are neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding. Rather, understanding is more like an ability. I understand something if I can discuss it intelligently, and use the information in practice. Even so, Wittgenstein is not content to think of understanding as some inner state from which intelligent discussion and informed practice flow. Rather, understanding consists in these various activities in the appropriate circumstances.1 Whether we understand Wittgenstein’s ideas is not a matter of how we feel about his work, but what use we can put it to. It is natural to wish to distinguish between understanding something and agreeing with it. One might wish to hold that people understand Wittgenstein’s work well enough—the problem is whether they agree with it.2 Their understanding of his work involves being able to work out what Wittgenstein might say about a certain situation, but the divergence arises from not accepting his account of that situation. I might understand Wittgenstein’s case against the inverted spectrum, but reject its plausibility. Or, I might understand Mormon beliefs well enough, but reject their plausibility. It seems misguided to insist that if someone rejects the plausibility of Wittgenstein’s case against the inverted spectrum, then the person must not have understood his position. It is surely important not to make acceptance a criterion for understanding. But the distinction between understanding and agreement is not always as clear as it may seem. Take the case of understanding a rule—the sort of case Wittgenstein primarily considers. To understand a rule is to be able to apply it correctly to a wide range of cases—including those that one

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has not encountered before. To understand a color term is to apply it to the proper samples. What constitutes a correct application is to apply it as we would apply it—to be in substantial agreement with the community of rule-followers, or language-users. “Let us suppose that . . . he continues the series correctly, that is, as we do it” (PI §145). The problem is that in some cases that Wittgenstein discusses, such as the two cases in the previous chapter (family resemblance and the inverted spectrum), the like-minded people may be largely lacking. Who are the “we” in “as we do it”? To return to the notions of culture and civilization introduced earlier, understanding Wittgenstein would amount to application in conformity with the culture from which Wittgenstein writes, not the civilization in which we (and he) in fact live. Even if we find the culture–civilization distinction to be problematic, what lies behind it is still relevant. Understanding, by Wittgenstein’s lights, will be application in conformity with those of a certain sort of temperament—one that we mostly lack. The claim to understand Wittgenstein, when interpreted by our lights, will be unconvincing to Wittgenstein. So it is that he expected not to be understood—by those of a temperament different from his.3 This way of seeing “understanding” fits well with things that Wittgenstein said about the concept: What makes a subject difficult to understand—if it is significant, important—is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather, it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see.4

“What most people want to see” constitutes part of the temperament of the times—most people want to see an essentialist definition beneath each concept, or a transdescriptive object behind each description. And it is just this desire that is an impediment: Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not a difficulty of the intellect, but of the will.5

Again, explanations (“about abstruse things”) will not really get to the point. This is why it seems questionable that Malcolm would come to understand the book through some special instruction from Wittgenstein.6 A passage in Part II of the Investigations nicely brings out the cultural aspects of understanding (223/235): We say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to an-

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other. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country’s language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them [Wir können uns nicht in sie finden; literally: “We cannot find ourselves in them”].

And similarly (July 9, 1948; C&V, 74/84): It is important for our approach, that someone may feel concerning certain people, that he will never know what goes on inside them. He will never understand them. (Englishwomen for Europeans).

These passages can be read as a commentary on Wittgenstein’s failure to understand others, and, more importantly in this context, others’ failure to understand Wittgenstein.7 While Wittgenstein presents this as an abstract point here, he personalizes the issue: This happens to me easily especially in England since the difficulties of communication (because of character, not because of language) are enormous from the start. So that one must perform one’s exercises on a swaying raft rather than on solid ground. For one never knows whether the other has entirely understood one; & the other has never understood one entirely.8

And he offers a concrete illustration in a recently published letter to his long-time friend Piero Sraffa: I have very slowly in my life come to the conviction that some people cannot make themselves understood to each other, or at least only in a very narrowly circumscribed field. If this happens each is inclined to think that the other doesn’t want to understand, and there are ENDLESS misunderstandings. This of course doesn’t improve the friendliness of the intercourse. I could go into details about us, but I don’t want to. . . . In order to understand why it’s impossible, or almost impossible, for certain people to understand each other, one has to think not of the few occasions on which they meet, but of the differences of their whole lives; and there can be nothing more different than your interests and mine, and your movements of thought and mine. Only by a real tour de force was it possible for us to talk to each other years ago when we were younger.

And then he adds in a postscript: The older I grow the more I realize how terribly difficult it is for people to understand each other, and I think that what misleads one is the fact that they all look so much like each other. If some people looked like elephants and others like cats, or fish, one wouldn’t expect them to understand each other and things would look much more like what they really are.9

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While the letter was written in English, the phrase “movements of thought” is reminiscent of the term “Denkbewegungen,” which occurs in Wittgenstein’s diary entries from the early 1930s. For instance: “The movement of thought in my philosophizing should be discernible also in the history of my mind, of its moral concepts & in the understanding of my situation.”10 It is just these movements of thought that are likely to be reflected in the different temperaments of the thinkers, which impede understanding. Wittgenstein’s advice to Charles Stevenson, concerning the difficulties of reading in the history of philosophy, could be applied to himself: I’m sorry you must do a lot of reading of the history of philosophy for it will hardly help you to clear up your own muddles. Really to understand other people’s thoughts or to learn from their confusions is enormously difficult, especially if they lived long ago and talked a philosophical language which isn’t your own. The only thing to do is always to tell yourself that you don’t understand exactly what they were at.11

In my view, entering into Wittgenstein’s writings is entering into a strange country, and the temperament that he expects from his readers is largely strange to us. In this sense we do not understand Wittgenstein—we cannot find our feet with him. Perhaps it would be best to tell ourselves that we don’t understand exactly was he was at.12 The passage quoted above about not “finding our feet” with others is shortly followed by the infamous line: “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” This line has always puzzled me. It is much like Moore’s paradox (“It’s raining, but I don’t believe it’s raining”) in that it could be true, but it couldn’t very well be asserted by anyone.13 If we can’t understand the lion, then we are in no position—thus far—to suppose that it is talking. There would be no reason to consider the sounds to be talking as opposed to the sounds simply being some phenomenon of nature—like roaring, or like the wind making noise by blowing through the leaves of a tree. To imagine that the lion is talking, rather than simply making noise, is to imagine that we can understand it to be talking—that is, understand to some extent what it is saying.14 And this seems to be a point to which Wittgenstein would have been sensitive. Yet the line could be true, since understanding comes in degrees. It may be that the lion could talk, in the sense that the lion could be understood (to be talking) by someone, who could be understood by someone else, who . . . could be understood by me. There could be a chain of links of understanding, in which one end of the chain could not understand the other. (X understands Y is not a transitive relation.) But then someone at one end could wonder whether there mustn’t have been a failure of translation somewhere along the way, without being able

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to put a finger on it.15 Presumably Wittgenstein’s point is that the concerns and interests of the lion would be so different from ours that we couldn’t understand it (perhaps along the lines of the elephants, cats, and fish Wittgenstein mentioned to Sraffa earlier). But the hypothetical sentence seems to ask us to take two different perspectives at once—comprehending (it talks) and uncomprehending (we don’t understand it)—and this seems puzzling. One might think that this book puts its reader in a similar predicament. If we understand Wittgenstein to be talking from a different temperament, then we understand him to that extent, yet Wittgenstein and I claim that we can’t understand Wittgenstein. Here would be another way to put my point: It is difficult to appreciate some of the positions Wittgenstein takes (on definitions, on private experience; later on causation, on ethics) when the attractiveness of the positions depends on having a temperament different from ours (stopping inquiry sooner, or too soon). We don’t appreciate Wittgenstein’s positions, and I have tried to suggest why that is so. This can be put by saying that we don’t understand Wittgenstein’s positions on certain issues, and we can now understand why that is so. We can understand what is at work in Wittgenstein taking the positions he does, without understanding the positions he takes. This does suggest a sort of dual perspective—assessing the positions, which we don’t easily understand; and assessing the motivation for those positions, which we do now better understand.

4â•… Exile

After Wittgenstein completed a draft of his Philosophical Investigations in 1945—what is called “Part I” in the published form—he went to work on a series of further topics. A draft of this later work has been included as “Part II” of the Investigations, which is a compilation of fourteen different sections.1 Section xi of Part II is an extended discussion of the concept of “seeing” and especially of “seeing as.” Wittgenstein’s famous illustration of this latter concept is the figure of the duck–rabbit (figure 4.1), which “can be seen as a rabbit’s head or as a duck’s” (PI, Part II, 194/204). The figure is like many ambiguous figures that can be seen in either of two ways. Wittgenstein wonders whether I am seeing “something different in the two cases” (195/205). Certainly nothing “in the picture” has changed. One might be tempted to say that my private experience of the picture has changed, but Wittgenstein will not be happy with that account. So what has changed? What constitutes seeing it “as,” say, a rabbit? “If I saw the duck–rabbit as a rabbit, then I saw: these shapes and colours (I give them in detail)—and I saw besides something like this: and here I point to

Figure 4.1 The duck–rabbit.

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a number of different pictures of rabbits.”2 In particular, I need to point to parts of the shapes (in this case there are no colors) and indicate what parts of the rabbit they are. The two protuberances on the left are the ears, the dot in the middle is the eye, the opening at the bottom is the (top of the) neck, and the small indentation on the right is the mouth. The protuberances can also be seen as a beak, which makes the duck a possible interpretation. But doesn’t the small indentation on the right undermine the interpretation as a duck? It would if the indentation were seen as essential to the picture, which it is for the rabbit. But when we interpret the shape as a duck, we see the indentation (if we see it at all) as an inessential ruffle of the feathers, or an imperfection of the drawing.3 But we could push the question further and ask how it is that we see the protuberances “as” ears. In this case it is clear that it is a combination of the similarity of the protuberances to other things we might call rabbit’s ears, and the place that the protuberances have in relation to the rest of this shape that we are seeing as a rabbit. To see the shape as a rabbit is to see particular parts of the shape as playing a certain role in relation to other parts, and to see the whole shape in relation to other similar shapes. I propose to see Wittgenstein as an exile. The shape of Wittgenstein’s life is an ambiguous shape that can be seen in many ways. Ray Monk proposed that we see Wittgenstein as a genius, and he laid out his life in a biography, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, which showed the value of this way of seeing Wittgenstein. There was no implication that Wittgenstein was only a genius and nothing else (whatever that would mean), nor was there an implication that there were no other ways of seeing Wittgenstein. But seeing Wittgenstein that way was helpful to understanding who Wittgenstein was. Monk laid out details from Wittgenstein’s life and work in a way that assisted us in seeing him that way, and that way of seeing him assisted us in making sense of his life and work. Since publishing the biography, Monk has explained that his approach to writing the biography was modeled on Wittgenstein’s own approach to doing philosophy.4 Like Wittgenstein, he was seeking to provide “that understanding which consists in ‘seeing connexions’” (PI, §122). And again (PI, §144): I wanted to put that picture before him, and his acceptance of the picture consists in his now being inclined to regard a given case differently: that is, to compare it with this rather than that set of pictures. I have changed his way of looking at things.

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This is what I wish to do, and the success of my project is in no way in competition with the success of Monk’s project. After all, the ambiguous shape with which we began this chapter could (and should) be seen as a duck and also as a rabbit. Of course, not just anything goes here. One can’t see the ambiguous shape as a bear. Or, at any rate, doing so would require considerable work to provide a context in which this would make sense. In any case, we should judge the success of a proposal to see something in a certain way by the illumination that comes from seeing it that way. Rather than right or wrong, it will instead be more or less helpful to see something in one way or another. I think it is helpful to see Wittgenstein as an exile—helpful in appreciating his sense that he was not understood, and our difficulties understanding him. Let us begin with a historical-literary survey of the concept of exile. “Exile” is a concept familiar mainly in religion, politics, and literature. Though there have doubtless been exiles as long as there have been communities, the first instance of exile in Western consciousness is the exile of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis (3:23– 24) of the Hebrew Bible. We are told that God “drove out” (24) Adam. Guards were then posted to insure there would be no return. This exile has the characteristics that it is involuntary and irreversible. Though we may return to Eden in our imaginations, so far as we know Adam and Eve never did (attempt to) return. Since the community was virtually constituted by Adam and Eve, perhaps what was left behind was easy community with God and an ease and innocence of life. Fast on the heels of this exile does God “drive” (Genesis 4:14) Cain from the land for killing his brother Abel. An exile from exile, Cain becomes a “wanderer” (nad), though with God’s promise of protection he “settled in the land of Nod” (16)—perhaps only word play, like “settling” in the Town of the Open Road. This story indicates how the exile may or may not find a place to settle, away from the original homeland. So far our examples have implied that exile is due to wrongdoing, but Sarah calls on Abraham to “drive away” (Genesis 21:10) Hagar and Ishmael, who have done little more than provoke Sarah’s jealousy. Abraham, at God’s behest, acquiesces, and the two “wandered in the wilderness” (14) until Ishmael eventually “lived” (21) in the wilderness of Paran, under God’s protection. While these stories involve what we are inclined to call exile, the concept of exile itself (Hebrew: gôlâh, g¯alût) takes shape with the Judean exile to Babylon in the period of 597 to 538 bce. This important event in Jewish

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history is mentioned in and inferred from the Hebrew Bible without ever fully being described.5 The Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar, captured Jerusalem in 597 and exiled the cream of the Kingdom of Judah, installing Zedekiah as ruler over those who remained. When he proved disloyal the Babylonians returned in 587 and sacked Jerusalem, destroying the Temple and deporting to Babylon most of those who had been left previously. Thus the main Jewish community lived in exile in Babylon. When the Persians, under Cyrus, defeated the Babylonians, Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem in 538. In fact, not all Jews returned, and these remaining Jews became the seed of the Jewish Diaspora.6 Some of the material in Psalms, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah addressed the Jews in exile and after the restoration to Jerusalem. It is from these biblical sources that we get the texture of exile. Biblical exile is involuntary. The Judeans were forced to leave their homeland and Temple, which was central to their self-understanding. On the surface this was because of their military defeat—but the prophets also insisted that the defeat itself was punishment from Yahweh for their religious unfaithfulness.7 Life in exile is largely a longing for return, and the promise of return looms large: “I shall restore your fortunes and gather you in from all the nations and wherever I have driven you, Yahweh declares. I shall bring you back to the place from which I have exiled you” (Jeremiah 29:14). In the meantime there is the question of how to retain the essentials of life and community in the context of exile. The issue of how to view one’s situation and how to live in exile had not been addressed in the earlier stories, and even here we get no systematic account. Jeremiah (29:4–7) strikingly recommends that the exiles “settle down . . . increase there and not decrease. Work for the good of the city to which I have exiled you . . . since on its welfare yours depends.” However, most importantly, the exiles must remain faithful to their own traditions and not assimilate or become corrupted by foreign traditions, and must await their time of deliverance.8 What does “exile” mean in modern English? Webster’s second edition says: “1. Forced, or sometimes voluntary, removal from one’s native country; banishment. 2. A person expelled, or who separates himself, from his country.” This already makes clear that there will be no easy essentialist definition offering necessary and sufficient conditions. In fact, “exile” is a good illustration of Wittgenstein’s notion of a family resemblance concept. Yet it is also clear that this attempt at definition will not do, as it fails to distinguish “exile” from such semantic neighbors as “emigrant” and “refugee.”9 Here are some relevant and important facts about Wittgenstein’s life:

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•â•‡

1889–1903: born and raised in Vienna 1903–1906: attended Realschule in Linz, Austria-Hungary •â•‡ 1906–1908: attended Technische Hochschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany •â•‡ 1908–1911: attended Manchester University, England, studying aero-Â� nautics •â•‡ 1911–1913: attended Trinity College, Cambridge, studying philosophy and logic •â•‡ 1913–1914: lived alone in Skjolden, Norway, working on philosophy •â•‡ 1914–1919: served in Austro-Hungarian army in World War I •â•‡ 1919–1926: trained as a teacher, and then taught in Lower Austria •â•‡ 1926–1928: worked as a gardener and then architect in Vienna •â•‡ 1929–1936: lectured at Cambridge University •â•‡ 1936–1937: lived alone in Skjolden, Norway, working on philosophy •â•‡ 1938: lectured at Cambridge, German annexation of Austria, gained British citizenship •â•‡ 1939–1947: worked as Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge •â•‡ 1941–1945: worked in hospitals in London and Newcastle-upon-Tyne during World War II •â•‡ 1947–1951: worked on philosophy in retirement, mostly in Ireland. •â•‡

The first thing to say about Wittgenstein’s life is that he moved around a lot. Why he moved so much is itself an important question. On the surface it could be said that Wittgenstein left the continent for England in 1908 to pursue his education. But since he could have studied aeronautics closer to home, on another level he may have been trying to separate himself from his family. Once Wittgenstein seemingly found a niche for himself in life— studying philosophy at Cambridge—he left this security for Norway. Then, for a combination of factors that included the desire to put himself to the test, he volunteered for the army even though he had a medical deferment. During the war he brought his philosophical researches to completion with the writing, and later publication, of the Tractatus. At this point he gave up his claim on any share of the sizeable family fortune. Having said everything he felt needed saying, and staying silent about the rest, he set off to be a rural school teacher. When this ultimately did not work out, he found other ways to occupy himself. Finally he felt pulled back into philosophy, and back to Cambridge. After several years there he again retreated to Norway, and even investigated the possibility of moving to the Soviet Union. The German annexation of Austria forced his hand toward British citizenship, which required again the steady job of philosophy. But he could only endure this for so long, and he again retreated into isolation.

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Was Wittgenstein an exile? Or better, in what ways was Wittgenstein an exile? He was never literally forced from anywhere or banished or expelled. But he did clearly feel very separate from those around him. In early 1929, shortly after returning to Cambridge, he wrote to Ramsey about a misunderstanding (CL, 228): “If you ever live amongst foreign people for any length of time & be dependent on them you will understand my difficulty.” And in his various moves he took intentional steps to separate himself from his current surroundings. The closest to literal exile would be his situation in 1938, when he, like many European intellectuals, would have “had to” escape from Hitler—especially since the Wittgensteins were initially classified as Jewish. Of course, he was already in fact out of the country, but the counterfactual still applied to him. But Wittgenstein lived with the mentality of an exile, and I believe this was because he was also an exile in another sense. He was exiled from his home era—Spengler’s culture of the early nineteenth century and before, as opposed to the civilization of the twentieth century in which he found himself. To fill out this sense of Wittgenstein as an exile, we turn to some contemporary discussions of the concept. As part of a thorough study of “exile,” Paul Tabori constructed the following “rough-and-ready” definition: An exile is a person compelled to leave or remain outside his country of origin on account of well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion; a person who considers his exile temporary (even though it may last a lifetime), hoping to return to his fatherland when circumstances permit—but unable or unwilling to do so as long as the factors that made him an exile persist.

Tabori then shared this definition with several hundred (seeming) exiles and international experts.10 This could lay the groundwork for a Socratic dialogue—setting out proposals, considering exceptions, and making modifications. But instead of seeking necessary and sufficient conditions, we shall here, following Wittgenstein’s lead, reduce our expectations and anticipate “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail” (PI, §66). The following discussion draws on writings from a wide variety of people collected in Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile, and surveyed in The Anatomy of Exile. The notion of exile touches on the following dimensions: 1.╇ Place of living: The exile is not living in the context in which he or she grew up. This is meant primarily in the physical sense. Most discussion of exile assumes that it involves exile from a physical place. But since the

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passage of time accompanies movement through space, one is located in different places at different times. Thus, exile from a place where one lived in the past is also a separation from that past time as well. William Gass writes: “When you are exiled from a space, you are exiled from a time.”11 Walter Benjamin said of Proust that in Remembrance of Things Past, he “recreates a place from which time has barred the artist.”12 And it is this more generalized sense that Breyten Breytenbach captures: “You are engaged with an elsewhere that cannot be reached: Isn’t that the defining characteristic of exile?” And Seidel: “An exile is someone who inhabits one place and remembers or projects the reality of another.”13 It seems natural to allow exile this broader sense of separation from another time or era. 2.╇ Reasons for current circumstances: There is some sort of coercion involved in (1). This coercion is primarily political coercion, but other types are possible, such as economic or psychological. The ancient Jews were exiled for political reasons, after military conquest. Figures in Genesis were exiled for moral reasons or preferences. No choice was involved in either case. Julio Cortázar writes: “For me at least, exile includes the notion of force, of compulsion.”14 But we also apply the term to cases in which circumstances become psychologically intolerable (by which we generally mean “difficult to tolerate”) and the person chooses exile. For example, Edvard Beneš was president of the Czechoslovak “Government-in-Exile” in London during World War II. This move to have narrower and broader senses of the term was prefigured by Aristotle’s discussion of “friendship” where the primary or focal meaning of the term “friendship” was a relationship founded on mutual recognition of goodness, but the term was extended also to relationships founded on usefulness or pleasure. Aristotle concedes that since that’s how people generally used the term: “presumably we, too, should call such people ‘friends,’ while saying that there is more than one form of friendship, and that primarily and in a strict sense that of good people as good is friendship, and the rest by way of resemblance.”15 Or we could choose to treat a wider range of cases not so much as secondary but as metaphorical. As Mary McCarthy notes: “the term lends itself to metaphorical inflation.” Paul Tabori, however, says: “It does not make an essential difference whether he is expelled by physical force or whether he makes the decision to leave without such an immediate pressure.”16 3.╇ Attitude toward origin: There is some sense in which the exile would prefer to be in the other context, and holds this as a hope. Fernando Alegría writes: “It seems to me that only an exile who intends to return has a true exile’s consciousness. There is no exile without the intention to go back.”17 Prophetic voices in the Hebrew Bible regularly invoked images of

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restoration. But the status of “exile” can be a fluid one, depending on one’s feelings. And indeed there is a tendency for exiles to eventually stop being exiles: “While the exile may leave with the full determination to return, this resolve is likely to weaken and fade in direct proportion to the length of his absence.”18 Among the exiled Jews, only some maintained the desire to return. In cases where return is impossible, there must at least remain a sort of counterfactual intent, perhaps best expressed as an affection. “Next year in Jerusalem” is the phrase that traditionally ends the Jewish Passover seder. 4.╇ Attitude toward current circumstances: The exile tries not to assimilate to the new context. Many of the practices of Judaism are thought to have originated during the exile, as ways to hold the group together in Babylon, in the face of the temptations of assimilation.19 The Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggeman writes: “Exile is a sense of not belonging, of being in an environment hostile to the values of this community and its vocation. Exile is practiced among those who refuse to accept and be assimilated in the new situation.”20 Both Brueggemann and Tabori take Psalm 137:1–6 to be a paradigmatic expression of this sensibility: By the rivers of Babylon we sat down; there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows nearby we hung up our harps. Those who captured us told us to sing; they told us to entertain them: “Sing us a song about Zion.” How can we sing a song to the Lord in a foreign land? May I never be able to play the harp again if I forget you, Jerusalem! May I never be able to sing again if I do not remember you, if I do not think of you as my greatest joy!

Brueggemann also sees the whole of Isaiah 40–55 (so-called Second Isaiah) to be concerned with this same theme of refusing assimilation. To begin with, Wittgenstein explicitly thought about himself in the terms of “exile.” In September of 1913 he and his close friend David Pinsent (to whom he later dedicated the Tractatus) traveled to Norway. It was during this trip that Wittgenstein formed the plan to work there in the coming year, instead of remaining in Cambridge. Pinsent kept a diary in which he recorded: Ludwig was very cheerful this morning, but suddenly announced a scheme of the most alarming nature. To wit. That he should exile himself and live for some years right away from everybody he knows—say in Norway. That he should live entirely alone and by himself—a hermit’s life—and do nothing but work in Logic. His reasons for this are very queer to me—but no doubt they are very real to him: firstly he thinks he will do infinitely more and better work in such circumstances, than at Cambridge, where, he says, his constant liability to interruption and distractions (such as concerts) is an awful hindrance. Secondly he feels that he has no right to live

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in an antipathetic world (and of course to him very few people are sympathetic)—a world where he perpetually finds himself feeling contempt for others, and irritating others by his nervous temperament—without some justification for that contempt etc, such as being a really great man and having done really great work. The first of the above reasons I cannot understand—I should go wild with boredom if I lived alone, and be unable to do any work without some distraction. But I believe he really is different and could easily stand it. The second reason above I consider quite Quixotic: but he feels it very strongly all the same.21

A week later Pinsent continues on the same subject: Ludwig received a letter—which finally settled his scheme for exiling himself. That idea has gradually been crystallizing of late and he has talked about it a lot. When he first mentioned it I thought it absurd, but I have gradually got to think differently of it: he seems quite certain that, once settled and working well, he will be happy: and if he does good work out there, it will be just as good as any good work he might have done at Cambridge. At Cambridge—one might think—he would have done equally good work, but also further good work in teaching others: but he swears he can never do his best except in exile.22

The deciding letter, Pinsent continued, was “news . . . that his sister and her husband were coming to live in London: he can’t stand either of them (he can’t stand most of his family): and he won’t live in England liable always to visits from them.” Much later Pinsent reports on a letter he received after Wittgenstein’s self-imposed exile commenced: Ludwig has settled down in a small Inn at Skoldjen on the Sognefjord, and except for a flying visit to Vienna last Xmas, which it appears he had to make very much against his will, he has been there ever since October last. He seems to be tolerating life quite well—and the solitary exile seems to be suiting him. I hear from him that his work in Logic is progressing well. He is at present making arrangements to build himself a small house there—which is to be finished about next Autumn—so he must intend living there pretty permanently.23

In fact the advent of World War I in August disrupted these plans. A small, secluded house was built for him in his absence, and he was only able to return in 1921. At this stage of Wittgenstein’s thinking, physical exile was an escape that was sought. There were strong psychological reasons for it, and no desire to return. These passages highlight the ways in which, for him, exile was an escape from both Cambridge academia and from his family. Pinsent’s first diary entry emphasizes the significant differences of temperament and antipathy that characterized Wittgenstein’s relations with others.24 Assimi-

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lation was not really an issue, since the main feature of exile he sought was isolation. While fighting in the war, Wittgenstein maintained a correspondence with Pinsent. In response to one letter from Pinsent, Wittgenstein wrote in his coded diary (July 26, 1916; GT, 74): “This kind, friendly letter opens my eyes to the fact that I am living in exile [Verbannung] here. It may be a healing exile, but I now feel it as an exile all the same.” Here the notion takes on the sense that it is involuntary (even though Wittgenstein volunteered for military service from which he could have been deferred). But it also becomes clear that exile is less a fact and more a state of mind: “ich fühle sie jetzt als Verbannung”—as exile. It wasn’t until after the war that Wittgenstein read Spengler’s newly published book, which laid out the important distinction between culture and civilization. Though this distinction did not create a sense of alienation in Wittgenstein, it certainly gave a structure to it. In drafting a preface in 1930 Wittgenstein writes (what we’ve already quoted, November 6 or 7, 1930; C&V, 6/8): This book is written for those who are in sympathy with the spirit in which it is written. This spirit is, I believe, different from that of the prevailing European and American civilization. The spirit of this civilization . . . is a spirit that is alien & uncongenial [fremder & unsympathischer Geist] to the author.

Wittgenstein used the word fremd—alien, stranger—and variations on it (Fremder, Fremdling, Fremdheit) very often in his notebooks. For example (April 23, 1947): “Cambridge grows more hateful to me. The disintegrating and putrefying English civilisation” provides a setting for (July 28, 1947): “feel myself to be an alien [fremd/Fremdling] in the world. If you have no ties either to mankind or to God, then you are an alien [Fremdling].”25 Malcolm reports that in early 1947 Wittgenstein revealed that “he had always suspected . . . that his friends regarded him as ‘Vogelfrei’: that is, as an outlaw, a bird at whom anyone had a right to shoot.”26 Shortly after the beginning of Michaelmas term in 1930, as Wittgenstein was adjusting to being back in Cambridge, he reflected in his diary (October 9, 1930): “In my room I feel not alone but exiled [exiliert].”27 Clearly by the time of his return to Cambridge and afterward, he had come to experience his place in the world as forced upon him, expressed in a great sense of alienation from those around him. As he wrote in the 1929 diary entry with which we opened this book: “Feel myself now very alien [fremd] here.” Later in his life, in a conversation with his friend O. K. Bouwsma (August 28, 1949), Wittgenstein “began remarking about the changes in our way of

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life since the days of his parents in Vienna. ‘They would scarcely recognize this as the same world.’ It is the machines of course that are so obvious. But he had in mind certain changes in the kind of human beings we are, incidental to all these changes in our surroundings.” Wittgenstein’s father, Karl, lived from 1847 to 1913, and his mother, Leopoldine Kalmus, from 1850 to 1926. But more than the specific years, Wittgenstein seems to have had an earlier era in mind—the earlier part of the nineteenth century. Wittgenstein went on to mention some differences: “There was a time when our lives were furnished rather simply, a house, a place, tools so many, a beast, and a circle of people. In this simplicity and this stability one grew attached to a limited environment. This life gave a certain quality—roots.” This clearly does not refer to his parents’ physical circumstances as adults, since they were wealthy. But it suggests an idealization of an earlier time with which Wittgenstein clearly identifies. In contrast to this, he continues: “Now not only are people transient, but neighborhoods do not remain the same. We live in surroundings to which we are not sentimentally attached. Most of what we use and own can be replaced by something just as good.” Though Wittgenstein was among the most transient of people, he clearly regretted these modern facts and tried to escape them—though, ironically, in doing so he confirmed them. Finally, Wittgenstein related that “He had once heard John Dewey talk about the kind of human being he wished by education to produce. ‘But I was a human being fitted into the old environment.’ How could he make such a human being in an altogether different environment?”28 Here Wittgenstein emphatically distinguishes his place of origin from his and our current circumstances. This conversation not only illustrates Wittgenstein’s sense of separation from the era and world around him, but connects it with “the kind of human beings we are.” But Wittgenstein not only himself conceptualizes his situation in terms of exile and related terms, he also fits patterns common to exiles. Mary McCarthy writes of “the exile’s characteristic restlessness”: “The whole point about them is their refusal to put down new roots. . . . Even when they have funds to buy a little house, take a long lease on a flat, they prefer transient accommodations. . . . If an exile buys a house or takes a long lease on a flat, it’s a sign that he’s no longer a true exile.”29 We have already noted Wittgenstein’s itinerate life. Even in Cambridge, where he lived the longest, and was finally a professor, he only ever stayed in college rooms, or rooms rented from others. Though Wittgenstein did have a small house built for himself in Norway, he spent relatively little time there.

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This rootlessness extends to intimate relations as well, for house and family imply assimilation. The African exile Es’kia Mphahlele writes that such a “liaison compels him to reckon with his own future as a man and as a political exile. On what terms will he be assimilated if he wants to raise a family and stay?”30 If the exile has a long-term intimate relationship, then the exile either needs to allow that relationship to domesticate him (or her), or else the exile must expect the partner to become a sort of exile as well. Wittgenstein flirted with two long-term intimate relationships, both in the 1930s. Wittgenstein wanted to, and almost did, marry Marguerite Respinger. They got to know one another in 1926. Wittgenstein’s agony over this relationship is expressed in his diaries.31 She finally married another on the last day of 1932. It is clear that she could muster little interest in joining Wittgenstein in the sort of exile that he lived—she was interested in an ordinary life together, very different from what Wittgenstein offered or imagined for them. Wittgenstein’s other long-term intimate relationship was with Francis Skinner. Skinner was at first a student of Wittgenstein and beginning in the spring of 1933 they became close friends, though the relationship remained rather asymmetrical.32 To sustain the relationship, Skinner became as much to Wittgenstein’s liking as he could. One might say that for the relationship to succeed, Skinner tried to join Wittgenstein in exile. In fact Skinner supported a plan to move to the Soviet Union with Wittgenstein. In any case, Wittgenstein ultimately tempered the relationship in the late 1930s, and later felt guilty about his treatment of Skinner. Interestingly, the close non-intimate friendships that Wittgenstein had tended to be with exiles. Perhaps the most important friendships, especially in the 1930s and 1940s, were with Italian humanist Raffaelo Piccoli, Italian economist Piero Sraffa, and Russian philologist Nicholas Bachtin, all residents of England—what the United States would term “resident aliens.” Edward Said writes that “in a very acute sense exile is a solitude experienced outside the group: the deprivations felt at not being with others in the communal habitation. . . . [T]he exile jealously insists on his or her right to refuse to belong. This usually translates into an intransigence that is not easily ignored.”33 Those familiar with Wittgenstein’s relationships with others will recognize him in this description—his unwillingness to eat at High Table at Cambridge and participate in collegial small talk, or to attend professional meetings. This mentality of separation is associated with significant barriers to understanding. Polish exile Stanislaw Baranczak refers to the “barriers of different experiences: the audience in the exiled writer’s adopted country,

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even if not entirely indifferent, is often unable to understand not merely his interpretation of reality but simply what he is speaking about. And quite naturally so, since neither the material of the readers’ own experiences nor their inherited way of viewing reality has prepared them to accept this sort of a literary world.”34 Breytenbach tellingly remarks that “the exile takes refuge in the comforting knowledge that he will ‘never be understood.’”35 Comforting, in the sense that the exile is relieved of individual responsibility for not being understood—for, say, not having written or explained clearly enough. So we see that Wittgenstein not only saw himself as an exile, but fit many of the patterns of behavior and thought often associated with people considered to be exiles.

5â•… Alienation or Engagement

How might Wittgenstein’s sense of alienation play itself out in his philÂ�osophy? In “A Defence of Common Sense,” an essay published in 1925, G. E. Moore claimed to know with certainty a number of things. One of these is that “the earth has existed for many years before my body was born.” Another is that each human being has “been, at every moment of its life after birth, either in contact with or not far from the surface of the earth.”1 In his later philosophy, Wittgenstein developed a method for approaching philosophical issues. In particular it was important to see those issues in a context. Wasfi Hijab, a student of Wittgenstein’s from 1945 to 1947, reported: “It didn’t matter what subject Wittgenstein discussed. What was important was the method he brought to bear on the subject, which was always the same. He always emphasized the importance of the context for understanding things. When we ignore the context, what remains is flawed.”2 For this purpose he would sometimes describe scenarios that constituted a context in which to consider the role of some concept or activity. Through these thought experiments we are brought to see the social and temporal dimensions of what otherwise might seem private, individual, or overly simple phenomena. According to Rush Rhees, Wittgenstein “used to say that what we might call ‘the anthropological method’ had proved quite fruitful in philosophy: that is, imagining ‘a tribe among whom it is carried on in this way: . . .’”3 As with cases in moral philosophy, our intuitions are elicited by such scenarios and compared with our theoretical judgments. In moral philosophy, utilitarians often find that this procedure loosens the hold of unfortunate intuitions (“biases”), while for others (usually anti-utilitarians) it loosens the hold of mistaken theories.4 For example, can torture really be (always) wrong if it is the only way to save all of New York City? Or, can utilitarianism really be right if it justifies the torture of an innocent bystander? There

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is, of course, the danger that cases are described in ways that conceal relevant complexities, just as scientific thought experiments may oversimplify or mislead. One needs to be ready to ask similar questions about Wittgenstein’s scenarios. While Wittgenstein readily acknowledges the danger of oversimplification of his scenarios, we readers must be willing to examine whether the incompletenesses are problematic for the issues at hand.5 In the last few years of his life Wittgenstein reflected on Moore’s claims to certain knowledge, discussed them with friends, and wrote notes on them that were eventually collected and published as On Certainty. Here are four passages (written in 1950): §92.╇ May someone have telling grounds for believing that the earth has only existed for a short time, say since his own birth?—Suppose he had always been told that,— would he have any good reason to doubt it? . . . why should not a king be brought up in the belief that the world began with him? And if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way. §262.╇ I can imagine a man who had grown up in quite special circumstances and had been taught that the earth came into being 50 years ago, and therefore believed this. We might instruct him: the earth has long . . . etc.—We should be trying to give him our picture of the world. This would happen through a kind of persuasion. §106.╇ . . . What reply could I make to the adults of a tribe who believe that people sometimes go to the moon (perhaps that is how they interpret their dreams), and who indeed grant that there are no ordinary means of climbing up to it or flying there? §264.╇ I could imagine Moore being captured by a wild tribe, and their expressing the suspicion that he has come from somewhere between the earth and the moon. Moore tells them that he knows etc. but he can’t give them the grounds for his certainty, because they have fantastic ideas of human ability to fly and know nothing about physics.

What is supposed to be the problem in these cases? How are we to describe it? We could spend a good deal of time trying to determine if Moore and the tribe participate in different language games, or live different forms of life, or have different world-pictures.6 I do not favor tackling this issue. Put in that way, it suggests that these various concepts either do or do not apply to particular situations, and we might figure out which situations they apply to, or which situations Wittgenstein thought they applied to.

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Whether a certain scenario is best described as involving only one or two different language games, or forms of life, is comparable to asking whether a certain chunk of geography is best described as one region or two. There is no presumption that these are real distinctions—rather, they are distinctions drawn in certain contexts for certain purposes. I think that “form of life,” like “language game” or “world-picture,” is more of a tool for Wittgenstein than anything else. He uses these notions as ways to look at various situations. In this sense I would call them heuristic concepts.7 Asserting that people share a form of life is anticipating that they will be able to achieve mutual comprehension on some range of issues. Perhaps the best way to characterize the problem in Wittgenstein’s scenarios is to say that Wittgenstein rules out rational means for Moore and the tribe to achieve mutual comprehension. Wittgenstein is claiming that in the scenarios described the differences between Moore and the tribe cannot be resolved by proof or by giving grounds. Other things may be possible, such as persuasion (though he means nonrational persuasion) or conversion, but these would presumably be based on temptation of threats or rewards, or force. In any case, he wants us to think that the prospects for reconciliation are dim and that the prospects for resolution are worrisome. These scenarios contain two oversimplifications: The encounter between Moore and the tribe, as Wittgenstein imagines it, is brief and it is didactic. Wittgenstein wonders what would happen “if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss”: “What reply could [he] make to the adults of the tribe. . . ?” At best “[He] might instruct him.”8 If this is how he imagined the encounter, it is no wonder that Wittgenstein tended to be pessimistic about what could be accomplished, short of persuasion. But it is surprising that Wittgenstein seemed to accept these oversimplifications. The prospects for rational reconciliation should not be shortchanged by them. Suppose there are two principles, say, that seem to be in conflict. Less than a week before his death, Wittgenstein wrote (April 23, 1951; OC §611): “Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic.” But to say they cannot be reconciled is to say that there is no acceptable interpretation or extension of their concepts that will bring them into conformity or compatibility with one another. Negative existentials are notoriously difficult to establish.9 And the difficulty is exacerbated by Wittgenstein’s rulefollowing considerations: What constitutes a legitimate interpretation of a rule is not determined by the rule in itself, but by the rule as it is practiced by a community through time. Thus, any statement about irreconcilability is a prediction about the future, as well as a statement about the present.10

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And furthermore, how the community practices the rule through time depends in part on what influences there are, perhaps from other communities. Thus, the prospect for reconciliation between principles depends on the nature of the interaction between those who hold them. If the interaction is brief and didactic, as it is between Moore and the tribe, the prospects are dim. If the interaction is extensive—for example, the two groups had to live together—the prospects might be brighter, though not necessarily so. Wittgenstein says of language games that they are “there—like our life” (April 19, 1951; OC, §559), which sounds very fixed. But, like our life, they are changeable. I believe that Wittgenstein overlooks these prospects for change. If we wish to use scenarios like those laid out by Wittgenstein to reflect on the possibilities, or impossibilities, of engagement and reconciliation, we need to undertake what I will call “diachronic anthropology.” We must look at what can happen over time when groups are engaged with one another— not simply in debate, but in life. If we do this we will not find that success is insured. In fact, there are many apparent failures. But there are successes— perhaps unexpected successes—which depend on moving beyond the restrictive conditions that Wittgenstein here implicitly accepts. And, indeed, the basis for moving beyond those restrictive conditions is well appreciated by Wittgenstein himself. The scenarios present the primary form of interaction between Moore and the tribe as intellectual. Yet Wittgenstein was fond of citing Faust’s discussion of the opening line of the Gospel of John.11 Goethe’s Faust cannot accept that “in the beginning was das Wort [the logos, the word],” nor that in the beginning was der Sinn [mind?]. Nor can he accept that in the beginning was die Kraft [force]. He finally asserts, what Wittgenstein twice quotes: im Anfang war die Tat [in the beginning was the deed].12 Wittgenstein is reminding himself and us that the fundamental consideration in understanding human beings is not linguistic but behavioral. Thus, we cannot afford to ignore the possibilities of living interaction, as Wittgenstein seems to do in these scenarios. Case Study: Marxism and Christianity In 1936, when Drury told Wittgenstein about Richard Hooker (1554–1600), who “tried to steer a middle course between Catholicism and Calvinism,” Wittgenstein replied: “That sounds impossible to me. How could there be any compromise between two such completely divergent doctrines?”13 I propose to examine a similar situation, Marxism and Christianity, as a case

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study in diachronic anthropology. Until the 1960s hardly anyone in the West would have disagreed that Marxism and Christianity were irreconcilable doctrines. Ruling Communist governments suppressed the Church and persecuted Christians, while the papacy, which had tolerated Fascism, had no qualms about denouncing Communism at least a dozen times as well as ex-communicating members of the Communist Party. De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, beginning with the Twentieth Party Congress, and the papacy of John XXIII and his Vatican II were among the events that enabled Christians and Marxists to meet on a dialogical basis. This formed the basis of the so-called Marxist–Christian Dialogue. Yet these dialogues were carried on in print, or as discussions at the level of international conferences, with little or no previous or ongoing contact among the participants. They were theoretical exchanges concerning different systems of belief, centered in Europe.14 But things were different in other parts of the world by the late 1960s and the 1970s. While visiting South America in 1971, and noting the “recent fact” of “a growing number of priests and Christians in general who have a participation in the process of liberation,” Fidel Castro is reported to have said, half-jokingly, that he felt rather confused because “theologians are becoming communists and communists are becoming theologians.”15 Castro was noting the beginnings of a transformation in both politics and religion in Latin America caused by extreme political oppression and grave economic hardship, and expressed in what came to be called “liberation theology.” This began with a proliferation of Christian base communities in which theology was experiential, communal, and practical. The first official expression of this movement was at the Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops in Medellin, Colombia, in the summer of 1968. How it can be that some people were committed to both Marxism and Christianity may not be so clear; that it was so, however, is a fact of history. In 1976 one of the leading liberation theologians wrote: To bring together [the] vastly different presuppositions [of Marxism and Christianity] is the task to which I shall try to make a very small contribution. Our total experience as Latin American Christians convinces us that it is possible, indeed necessary, to establish these correlations. But it also convinces us that this will not happen mainly through theoretical discussion . . . but in actual historical engagement. Reflection must be placed in the service of such action, but it cannot be dispensed with nor its importance minimized. It must accompany the experience of success and failure, it must try to penetrate the nature of our practical dilemmas, frustrations and drawbacks in order to overcome them and it must temper and give consistence to our enthusiasm.16

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Reconciliation works best when and where there is a need for engagement between people, not just a clash of disembodied ideas or doctrines. Oppression in Latin America provided these conditions. Faith became not so much orthodoxy (right belief) as orthopraxy (right action). As Karl Marx wrote, in the eleventh of his “Theses on Feuerbach”: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”17 But engagement will lead to reconciliation only where those involved come to trust some of the same things. Wittgenstein writes (April 11, 1951; OC, §509): “I really want to say that a language-game is only possible if one trusts something (I did not say ‘can trust something’).” And I will add that a common language game is possible only where people trust something in common. Trust is developed not so much by discussion but by life in common. (Of course, it is not guaranteed by life in common.) Wittgenstein’s scenarios do not tell us where Moore and the king will go once the discussion is over. If they go back home to their respective separate residences, as did the European Christians and Marxists of the 1960s, then nothing much can be expected to happen. If they have to live together and find they have need of one another, as did Latin Americans, then the prospects may change. Of course the papacy tried to disown liberation theology (OC, §611: “heretic”!), and this raises the question of whether it is a legitimate interpretation of Christianity. In a 1982 letter to the Nicaraguan bishops Pope John Paul II condemned the movement, and in his visit to Central America in 1983 he called it an “internal adversary.”18 The papacy, however, is not the final arbiter of this issue, even if it thinks that it is. The deepest issue is whether the Holy Spirit was alive among the Marxist Christians of Latin America. Certainly those familiar with the base communities that espoused liberation theology did not doubt their faithfulness. Communist governments were more accommodating than most of the ecclesiastical structures, but whether that was pragmatic and disingenuous is open to question. The point is now moot, at least from the Marxist side. In Drury’s report of his conversation with Wittgenstein, quoted earlier, about Calvinism and Catholicism, he continues: “The next day he [Wittgenstein] had obviously thought about this and said to me that he could now see that a thoroughly bourgeois culture might want some such compromise.” One of the reasons rapprochement was possible between the two sides in Latin America was that orthodoxy on both sides was not strictly defined and enforced.19 There was enough diversity within the communities guided by these ideologies that heresy in the eyes of some (“the faith is being eaten

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away from within”) was reinvigoration in the eyes of others (“these are authentic attempts to prevent the faith from becoming a historical relic and to keep it a living reality for here and now”). When Wittgenstein talks about rule-following in terms of what we find, or the community finds, natural to go on doing, he is touching on, without plumbing, these depths.20 Certainly the issue often is who “we” are, who is part of my “community.” For example, who are the “Christians” and the “Marxists” we are talking about when we wonder whether “Christianity” and “Marxism” can be reconciled? When Moore and the king talk, Moore is not seen as part of a community at all, and the king, while part of a community in one sense, is not an ordinary part of that community. Neither is seen as beholden to any community, nor do any communities come into contact with one another. Indeed, here Moore is presented as an exile—out of touch with any community. Whether liberation theology shows that Marxism and Christianity are reconcilable is not, finally, my point. My point is that liberation theology raises the right kinds of questions for thinking about the issues skirted in Wittgenstein’s brief scenarios. It certainly shows the possibility of success, and ways for pursuing success, in cases that may have seemed hopeless. As Wittgenstein reminds himself, and us, in another context: “don’t think, but look!” (PI, §66).21 Case Study: Wittgenstein and the Soldiers My second case study is a study in failure—but I think the failure is enlightening for understanding the limitations and pessimism of Wittgenstein’s scenarios. We have mentioned the many times when Wittgenstein lived in circumstances of separation—whether the separation was physical or psychological. Wittgenstein lived through these experiences with different degrees of success. Life in Norway was apparently a success.22 Life in Cambridge had many fewer ups than downs. His experiences in the army and then as a school teacher were nearly complete disasters, salvaged only by his own spiritual growth and occasionally finding a friend to embrace. I think the experiences of those years were formative for his later philosophy. In particular, I think that the pessimism of his scenarios is in part an expression of his own inability to find mutual comprehension in these wilderness experiences. What I wish to show, by quotation from his coded wartime diaries, is this mutual incomprehension that Wittgenstein articulates in these later philosophical discussions.

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Having volunteered for service in the Austro-Hungarian army, beginning in August 1914, Wittgenstein spent four months with a crew on board the ship Goplana. The bulk of the Austro-Hungarian crew came from various subject Slavic nationalities. Wittgenstein sets the stage as follows (August 10, 1914; GT, 14): “Need a great deal of high spirits and philosophy to get used to things here. When I woke up today it seemed to me like one of those dreams where one absurdly finds oneself in school again. Of course there is much humor in my position and I perform the lowest tasks with an almost ironic smile.” Indeed, Moore’s situation with the tribe is like being in a (bad) dream as well.23 Wittgenstein’s high spirits and philosophy (presumably Stoic philosophy) didn’t last for long. What follows is a series of excerpts from his coded diary that constitutes a running commentary on his relationship with his fellow soldiers. August 15 (GT, 17): “The ship’s company is a band of pigs [Saubande]! Without enthusiasm for anything, unbelievably crude, stupid and malicious. . . . It will hardly be possible to communicate with people here.” August 16 (GT, 17): “Again: the stupidity, impertinence and malignity of these people knows no bounds. Every job turns into agony.” August 21 (GT, 18; C&V, 1/3): “The lieutenant . . . can have to do with the biggest scoundrels & be friendly without losing any of his dignity. When we hear a Chinese talk we tend to take his speech for inarticulate gurgling. Someone who understands Chinese will recognize language in what he hears. Similarly I often cannot discern the human being in a man.”24 After having been jeered by the crew he wrote, on August 25 (GT, 19): “It was terrible. If there is one thing I have found out it is this: in the whole crew there is not one decent person.” November 9 (GT, 40): “What mean voices! You can hear all the viciousness of the world croaking and snarling in them. Meanness wherever I look. Not a single heart with feeling in it in sight!” November 12 (GT, 41): “The worse the situation becomes, the cruder are the NCOs. Because they feel that they can give free rein to their meanness unchecked by the officers, who are now losing their heads and no longer exercise any control to keep things on the right path. Every word you hear now is a piece of abuse. Because there is not the slightest reward for decency anymore, so that people abandon even the small amount of it that may still be left to them. It is all extremely sad.” In general Wittgenstein sought impassivity and isolation in the face of bad relations with his fellow soldiers. He felt he needed to cut himself off from the rest of the crew. By December 9, 1914, Wittgenstein was attached to a garrison workshop, which allowed him some privacy. January 27, 1915 (GT, 56): “Spent the

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evening with many officers in the café. Most of them behaved like pigs. I even drank a tiny bit more than was necessary.” Wittgenstein was transferred to a workshop train and more favorable conditions in August 1915. On March 21, 1916, Wittgenstein went to the front, and was in battle from April through June. In chapter 1 we covered Wittgenstein’s ways of dealing with danger during this period. Here we cover his relations with fellow soldiers. April 27, 1916 (GT, 69): “The men of the unit with few exceptions hate me because I am a volunteer. So I am nearly always surrounded by people who hate me. And this is the one thing which I still do not know how to take. There are malicious and heartless people here. It is almost impossible to find a trace of humanity in them.” May 6 (GT, 70): “Understand people. Whenever you feel like hating them, try to understand them.” May 8 (GT, 71): “The people around me are not so much mean as appallingly limited. This makes it almost impossible to work with them, because they forever misunderstand one. These people are not stupid but limited. Within their circle they are smart enough. But they lack character, and thereby breadth. ‘A heart of true faith will understand all.’”25 After hearing about this onslaught of experiences, it is easy to imagine Wittgenstein (rather than Moore) as having been “captured by a wild tribe [of Slavic conscripts], and their expressing the suspicion that he [who volunteered for service!] has come from somewhere between the earth and the moon. [Wittgenstein] tells them that he knows etc. but he can’t give them the grounds for his certainty, because they have fantastic ideas of . . . ” (OC, §264). Although Wittgenstein usually had to live and work with the other soldiers, and they had many common purposes because of a common enemy, these factors had little tendency to relieve Wittgenstein’s alienation. In fact he tended to reinforce the alienation by separating himself as much as possible from the other soldiers. And if he found himself engaging with them on their terms, his superego immediately pronounced the rapprochement heretical (“I even drank a tiny bit more than was necessary,” quoted above). One can perhaps see him softening in the passages from 1916 during battle. He tries for some understanding, if not engagement, but clearly fails. I am not suggesting that Wittgenstein should have sought and found reconciliation with his military comrades. Perhaps they were too corrupt (or he was too strange). My point is that his experience of alienation—here and elsewhere in his life—was so profound that he became indelibly pessimistic and incurious about the prospects for reconciliation, in ways that influenced his philosophizing. Wittgenstein’s biographer, Brian McGuinness, says of the time between ages 25 and 40: “These are the really formative

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years in a man’s life and in them [Wittgenstein’s] mood of prevailing pessimism became established.”26 Wittgenstein entered the army at age 25 and left off teaching in rural Austria at age 37. In his last course of lectures (1946–1947) Wittgenstein is reported by Malcolm to have made the following comments about his philosophical procedure: What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is to suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kind of uses of it.27

I hope to have carried out the very procedure Wittgenstein describes— beginning with the scenarios he presented and suggesting possibilities of interaction and development over time that he had not considered. The philosophical problem of reconciling Marxism and Christianity is, I believe, at least partly a sociological problem of whether people who are (called) Marxists and people who are (called) Christians can find common ground. This is not something that we can know in advance and theorize about wholly a priori. Usually Wittgenstein’s purpose in presenting a scenario is to widen our awareness of possibilities. But there is the danger that it does the opposite. In such cases Wittgenstein ends up, unawares, theorizing about such things a priori. Or at any rate his a posteriori reflections are so soaked in his experiences of alienation and failure of engagement that he easily forgets or ignores—he doesn’t think of—cases that may work differently. In particular, his scenario limits the kinds of interactions that are possible, and so limits the kinds of reconciliation that are possible. Again Wittgenstein works with “a one-sided diet.” He nourishes his thinking “with only one kind of example” (PI, §593). What I have suggested here is that we use his procedure, but use it more fully than he has. Wittgenstein’s treatment of such scenarios may lead one to think Wittgenstein is a relativist—different points of view exist isolated from one another, in different language games, or forms of life, or world pictures. They are unable to productively engage or be productively compared with one another. I think a better way to characterize the situation is that

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Wittgenstein is a pessimist—he does not think it worth investigating the prospects for productive engagement of different points of view—which may then seem to have relativistic implications. What might happen between Moore and the tribe? The first point is that we really don’t know. And this is why I suggest that the issue is largely a sociological one. But the second point is that Moore and the tribe might find common ground, even though Wittgenstein was not himself in the habit of seeking common ground. How this might work depends partly on what kind of role Moore has in relation to the tribe. Perhaps we picture Moore as playing the role of something like a missionary. This is encouraged by referring to the other group as a “tribe” (Volksstamm)—indeed, “wild tribe.” Earlier I quoted Wittgenstein (OC, §611): “Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic.” The larger context goes like this (OC, §609–10): “Supposing we met people who did not regard that as a telling reason. Now, how do we imagine this? Instead of the physicist, they consult an oracle. (And for that we consider them primitive.) Is it wrong for them to consult an oracle and be guided by it?—If we call this ‘wrong’ aren’t we using our language game as a base from which to combat theirs? And are we right or wrong to combat it? Of course there are all sorts of slogans which will be used to support our proceedings.” He then goes on in the following paragraph (§612) to say: “I said I would ‘combat’ the other man, —but wouldn’t I give him reasons? Certainly, but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.)” Fair enough. But also think what happens when groups intermarry. Here we can insert Wittgenstein’s comment from another context (RPP1, §630): “One is inclined to say: ‘Just live with us for a while and then you’ll come to understand’.” And this can be different from mere persuasion. Of course, at the end of reasons comes persuasion. But who is to say when reasons have come to an end? While at a given point in time our only fast-acting resource may be to combat their language game from ours, it doesn’t follow that we need to limit our attention to fast-acting resources. In a later chapter (chapter 10) we will discuss Wittgenstein’s insistence on calling a halt to justification. It may be that he is sometimes willing to do this prematurely, without exploring options for further engagement. The third point is that the issues that arise when we think about seeking common ground are philosophically interesting. Which kinds of changes in our thinking are rational changes, and which are nonrational? If we respect Wittgenstein’s unease with essentialism about concepts, we will

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allow actual cases to influence our thinking about rationality. Can an atheist who joins in the life of religious believers and some time later becomes a religious believer be said to have reasons for the change? Or will such “reasons” automatically be suspect?28 Some evidence can only be acquired by people with a certain mindset or in certain situations. One can have good reasons (in one sense) to try living a religious life, or try getting to know homeless people, and then one may have good reasons (in another sense) to pray, or consult the Bible, or donate a large portion of one’s income to charity. It is possible for such things to happen by a sheer “leap of faith,” but that is not the only way they can occur. There could hardly be clearer indication that Wittgenstein experienced life as an alien—“a stranger in a strange land” (Exodus 2:22).29 How could this not have a lasting impact on his view of things? And how different this view would be from that of many other people. In the next chapter we examine what a philosopher might be called on to do from this viewpoint.

6â•… The Work of Exile

What is one’s work as an exile? The Northern Kingdom of the Israelites accepted assimilation in Babylonia, as do most exiles, and disappeared from the history books. The Southern Kingdom of the Judeans sought to retain their identity in exile. They “wept by the rivers of Babylon,” while Isaiah prophesied (Isaiah 40:3) “a voice crying in the wilderness.” The Judeans in exile mostly bided their time, avoiding assimilation and awaiting restoration to their previous location and relation to God. One might suppose they needed to earn their restoration through increased faithfulness, but this does not seem to have been the case.1 The prophets among them urged faithfulness and promised restoration. The prophets held out an image of life that was different from the life they were experiencing in exile. Hebrew testament scholar Walter Brueggemann describes the work of the prophet in Second Isaiah this way: “the poetry cuts underneath the behavior to begin to transform the self-image, communal image, and image of historical possibility. The rhetoric works to deabsolutize [current] modes of reality, so that fresh forms of communal possibility can be entertained.”2 This is to prepare the people for their restored life. Since we are seeing Wittgenstein as an exile from an earlier era, restoration to that earlier era is out of the question—short of time travel. From this perspective it is easy to see him as that voice crying in the wilderness. What, then, is Wittgenstein to do? Spengler was ready with advice: [This] is a time of decline. True. But we have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant. . . . One must begin by asking oneself . . . what today is possible and what he must forbid himself.3

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The question of what Wittgenstein is to do—what is possible and what to forbid oneself—is a serious one. And there is no one single answer that Wittgenstein gave to it. But he did see the question in Spengler’s terms, at least in 1930. Wittgenstein wrote, in the draft preface quoted in chapter 2 (C&V, 6/8–9): For in times like these, genuine strong characters simply leave the arts aside and turn to other things and somehow the worth of the individual man finds expression. Not, to be sure, in the way it would at a time of high culture. A culture is like a big organization which assigns each of its members a place where he can work in the spirit of the whole; and it is perfectly fair for his power to be measured by the contribution he succeeds in making to the whole enterprise. In an age without culture on the other hand forces become fragmented and the power of an individual man is used up in overcoming opposing forces and frictional resistances; it does not show in the distance he travels but perhaps only in the heat he generates in overcoming friction. But energy is still energy and even if the spectacle which our age affords us is not the formation of a great cultural work, with the best men contributing to the same great end, so much as the unimpressive spectacle of a crowd whose best members work for purely private ends, still we must not forget that the spectacle is not what matters.4

And he goes on to write: It is all one to me whether or not the typical western scientist understands or appreciates my work, since he will not in any case understand the spirit in which I write. Our civilization is characterized by the word “progress.” Progress in its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves. I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings. So I am not aiming at the same target as the scientists and my way of thinking is different from theirs.5

The idea of achieving a “perspicuous view” of things was, for Wittgenstein, important in philosophy.6 Wittgenstein’s role as an exile seems to have fit him for achieving such a view—it fit him to be a philosopher. His comments about philosophy and the nature of philosophy are quite various, but some of them resonate quite well with the condition of exile. Recall Wittgenstein’s comments from October 1929, after recording the dream with which we opened this book: “Feel myself now very alien here. Completely dependent on myself. That could be good for me if I knew how to use it properly.” This idea of finding something positive from the experience of exile—using it “properly”—is emphasized by Julio Cortázar: “But

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what if exiles were also to take a positive view of exile? . . . What I am calling for is a deliberate act of distancing, and at the same time, I am making an appeal to those inner resources that have so often saved man from total annihilation, surfacing in various ways.”7 Wittgenstein did go on to find a way to use this properly. He wrote in 1931 (Z, §455): “(The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas. That is what makes him a philosopher.)” This suggests that exile is an appropriate status for a philosopher, discomforting though it may be. Perhaps the separation from a community is what allows the philosopher to gain the sort of synoptic overview of language necessary to see its ditches. In 1945 Wittgenstein warned his friend Rush Rhees away from joining the Revolutionary Communist (Trotskyist) Party because of the conformity it would require: Whereas in doing philosophy you have got to be ready constantly to change the direction in which you are moving. . . . You must be able to give up those central notions which have seemed to be what you must keep if you are to think at all. . . . And if you are thinking as a philosopher you cannot treat the ideas of communism differently from others.8

In 1931 (November 1; C&V, 17/24) Wittgenstein had characterized the logician Frank Ramsey as a “bourgeois thinker”: I.e., he thought with the aim of clearing up the affairs of some particular community. . . . The idea that this state might not be the only possible one in part disquieted him and in part bored him. He wanted to get down as quickly as possible to reflecting on the foundations—of this state. This was what he was good at and what really interested him; whereas real philosophical reflection disturbed him until he put its result (if it had one) to one side and declared it trivial.

Spelling out the implications of this in 1944, Wittgenstein shocked Rhees by declaring that Georg Kreisel was the most able philosopher he had met who was also a mathematician. “More able than Ramsey?” Rhees asked. “Ramsey?!” replied Wittgenstein. “Ramsey was a mathematician!”9 Presumably Wittgenstein thought that Ramsey was unable to maintain a sufficient distance from mathematics to be a good philosopher.10 Wittgenstein also used geographical imagery in his discussions of philosophy (PI, §125): “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’.” He sometimes compared himself to a tour guide: I am trying to conduct you on tours in a certain country. I will try to show that the philosophical difficulties which arise in mathematics as elsewhere arise because we find ourselves in a strange town and do not know our way. So we must learn the topography by going from one place in the town to another, and from there

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to another, and so on. And one must do this so often that one knows one’s way, either immediately or pretty soon after looking around a bit, wherever one may be set down. . . . This is an extremely good simile. . . . The difficulty of philosophy is to find one’s way about.11

And of course the preface to PI: “The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings. The same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions.” This tour-guide metaphor fits well with the notion of exile: A philosopher has to be ready to be a guide for any part of the city. One who is too deeply immersed in a single part of the city cannot play this role. Thus one cannot be a resident of any particular neighborhood, but must be able to rise above that, as Ramsey had not. This virtue of exile is confirmed by Leszek Kolakowski: “That the position of an outsider offers a cognitive privilege is well-known and unquestionable. A tourist often sees things which a native does not notice, as they have become a natural part of his life (one thinks of a tourist in America named Alexis de Tocqueville).”12 Thus, being an exile is an asset so far as philosophy is concerned. And if being a good philosopher requires being an exile, it is understandable that Wittgenstein regularly encouraged his students to find work outside of philosophy.13 Wittgenstein himself contemplated leaving philosophy, in the mid1930s, as his fellowship at Cambridge was due to expire. It is with this thought that Wittgenstein may have looked to Russia. It has never been clear exactly why Wittgenstein was attracted to the idea of moving to Russia, but it is by now hard to avoid the thought that it was, for him, a possible return from exile. Monk sees Wittgenstein’s attraction to Russia in light of John Maynard Keynes’s account, A Short View of Russia, which Wittgenstein read in 1927 and appreciated.14 But the fact that Wittgenstein and Engelmann already considered a “possible flight [Flucht, as in ‘escape’] to Russia” in 1922, suggests that his interest was instigated earlier by reading Spengler.15 In his discussion with members of the Vienna Circle on January 1, 1931, Wittgenstein said: “What should be given to the Americans? Surely not our half-rotten culture. The Americans have no culture yet. From us, however, they have nothing to learn. . . . Russia. The passion is promising.”16 Spengler clearly viewed Russia as the embryo of a new culture, and considered Dostoevsky to be its prophet.17 Perhaps after all there did exist a genuine or incipient culture—only not in the West. Just as Palestine was the Zionist goal of Jews in Diaspora, Russia could have seemed to be the cultural

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homeland for the exile Wittgenstein. Thus, even without time travel, a sort of restoration might have been possible after all. Engelmann himself went on, in 1925, to consider more seriously an escape to the real homeland. Wittgenstein comments: That you want to go to Palestine is the one piece of good news that makes your letter cheering and hopeful for me. This may be the right thing to do and may have a spiritual effect. I might want to join you. Would you take me with you?18

But when Engelmann finally did emigrate to Tel Aviv in 1934, Wittgenstein said no more about that.19 By this point, he and Francis Skinner were already taking Russian lessons. Wittgenstein visited Russia for some two weeks in September 1935, in search of permanent work there. Things did not go well, and presumably Wittgenstein did not find what he thought he might. From this perspective it is especially ironic that whereas he had hoped for work as a laborer, the only thing he was offered was work as a philosopher—as lecturer at the University of Moscow, or professor at Kazan University.20 It was presumably the very thing in which success could be impeded by a flight from exile.21 Wittgenstein’s interest in Russia lingered even after this unsuccessful visit. Almost two years later Wittgenstein writes in his diary while in Norway: “I sometimes consider whether I should leave here now already. For example: first to Vienna for a month, then to England for a month—or longer—then to Russia. And then return here?—Or to Ireland?”22 In his last letter to Engelmann he writes (June 21, 1937): “I am now in England for a short stay; perhaps I shall go to Russia. God knows what will become of me.”23 Friedrich Hayek was a distant cousin of Wittgenstein. In a memoir he recounts that after World War II Wittgenstein had visited Soviet-occupied Vienna: “He then engaged me in the most lively conversation, beginning with his impressions of the Russians at Vienna, an experience which evidently had shaken him to his depth and destroyed certain long-cherished illusions.”24 Perhaps he had trouble believing that Dostoevsky’s Russia—the home culture and promised land—did not really exist for him. Indeed, the homeland is rarely what it seems from abroad. In any case, Wittgenstein lived out his years in exile. Failing to find a satisfying culture in Russia, Wittgenstein considered various possible audiences, present and future, for his work. In the draft of the 1930 preface Wittgenstein writes (November 6 or 7, 1930; C&V, 6/9): “So I am really writing for friends who are scattered [verstreut] throughout the corners of the globe.”25 And he later comments on this (January 18, 1931; C&V, 10/12–13): “If I say that my book is meant for only a small

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circle [kleinen Kreis] of people (if it can be called a circle) I do not mean to say that this circle is in my view the elite of mankind but it is a circle to which I turn . . . because they form my cultural circle, as it were my fellow countrymen in contrast to the others who are foreign [fremd] to me.”26 Who were among the small circle of friends Wittgenstein had in mind? Likely he was thinking of friends from Olmütz—Paul Engelmann, Heini Groag, Fritz and Max Zweig.27 Perhaps also Moritz Schlick, Adolf Loos, Karl Kraus, and Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine, in Vienna.28 Among more current friends, perhaps Piero Sraffa and Nicholas Bachtin. These were people he considered to be friends, peers, and sympathetic to him in some sense. Essentially he was writing for what he might have supposed to be other exiles. In the course of the 1930s, Wittgenstein lost contact with Engelmann’s circle and become alienated from Sraffa; Loos died in 1933; Kraus died and Schlick was murdered in 1936. What small circle there was evaporated. Much later, then, Wittgenstein seemed to suppose that his thoughts might have value only for a future culture. In 1949 he said to Drury: “My thinking is not wanted in this present age, I have to swim so strongly against the tide. Perhaps in a hundred years people will really want what I am writing.”29 And he looked toward the day when “a culture will arise out of this civilization” (December 21, 1947; C&V, 64/73). We should presumably read Wittgenstein’s “hundred years” as however long it would take to put his future readers in the culture of a new era.30 In yet another prefatory comment (January 8, 1948; C&V, 66/75) he wrote: “With repugnance I hand over the book to the public. The hands in which it will fall are mostly not the ones in which I like to imagine it. May it, I wish, soon become entirely forgotten by the philosophical journalists, and thus perhaps remain preserved for a better kind of reader.” This idea of his work as awaiting some future time is well expressed in this diary entry, from an earlier time when Wittgenstein had been thinking more about Spengler: In the metropolitan civilization the spirit [Wittgenstein’s work?] can only huddle in some corner. And yet it is not for instance atavistic & superfluous but hovers above the ashes of culture as an (eternal) witness— —as if an avenger of the deity. As if it were awaiting a new incarnation (in a new culture).31

Not atavistic, because not merely left over from the past; not superfluous, because a witness to possibilities still realizable but nearly forgotten.32 These thoughts that his work was for the future took hold especially once Wittgenstein had stopped teaching. His last class was in May 1947. He explained his resignation to Bouwsma as necessary to finish his book, but

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also as a result of pessimism about his role as a teacher.33 Thus he eventually came to feel that his legacy would have to be through his writing and its impact at some distant time. Consider the 1929 passage (quoted in chapter 2) in which Wittgenstein considers his relation to an earlier era (C&V, 2/4): I often wonder whether my cultural ideal is a new one, i.e. contemporary, or whether it comes from the time of Schumann. At least it strikes me as a continuation of that ideal, though not the continuation that actually followed it then. That is to say, the second half of the 19th Century has been left out.

This exactly prefigures the ambiguity of his later responses—is he writing for a new culture such as Russia, or a past culture that may be renewed by the scattered few? In any case, he is writing for a culture (new or old), not for a civilization.34 During the break before Easter term, 1947, what would turn out to be his last term teaching, Wittgenstein reflected on the difficulty of trying to change people’s philosophical views by writing or arguing (April 13–14, 1947; C&V, 62/71): “It is as though I wanted to change men’s and women’s fashions by talking.” Perhaps recalling his 1931 strategy to deal with common philosophical problems by erecting “signposts . . . to help people past the danger points” (C&V, 18/25), he now reflects (61/70): “my warnings are like the posters at the ticket offices at English railway stations ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ As if anyone reading that would say to himself ‘On second thought, no.’” The philosopher says “Look at things like this!”—but first, that is not to say that people will look at things like this, second, he may be altogether too late with his admonition, & it’s possible too that such an admonition can achieve absolutely nothing & that the impulse towards such a change in the way things are perceived must come from another direction.

The diagnosis he proposes sounds positively political: “It is not by any means clear to me that I wish for a continuation of my work by others, more than a change in the way we live, making all these questions superfluous.” This is reminiscent of an earlier passage (May 30, 1938; RFM, 132): The sickness of a time is cured by an alteration in the mode of life of human beings, and it was possible for the sickness of philosophical problems to get cured only through a changed mode of thought and of life, not through a medicine invented by an individual. Think of the use of the motor-car producing or encouraging certain sicknesses, and mankind being plagued by such sickness until, from some cause or other, as the result of some development or other, it abandons the habit of driving.35

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What sorts of changes does Wittgenstein have in mind here? It is impossible to think of Wittgenstein as a social reformer, like Plato.36 But he does seem to see the relevance of social habits for resolving philosophical issues. This brings us back to the concern with temperament. Wittgenstein foresees that these kinds of things can change. And with them, language games, from which philosophical perplexities grow, can change too. Why would a change in the way people live matter? Because: “if one lives differently, one speaks differently. With a new life, one learns new language games.”37 And new language games may—may—offer fewer philosophical temptations. On a larger scale, he sees these kinds of changes as coming with the evolution from culture to civilization and (eventually) back again. In some moods Wittgenstein saw these problems and despaired of accomplishing anything himself—seeing things as out of his hands. But between 1930, when he saw his audience as a scattered circle of “cultured” friends, and the late 1940s, when he saw an audience only in the future, Wittgenstein taught regularly at Cambridge. During this time Wittgenstein addressed people around him who were part of the current civilization. And during this period he took more seriously the idea that his work could have an impact on them. Although teaching and writing may not be able to bring about a movement to a culture, they may have been able to affect people’s temperaments. So it is that his writings during the time he was teaching—comprising the vast bulk of his so-called later philosophy—address a reader who is imagined not to share the proper temperament. The sources of philosophical problems surveyed in chapter 2, and the strategies Wittgenstein employs to counter them, presuppose an audience of problematic temperament. That an exile has various temperamental differences from those among whom he lives is a point made by George Santayana. Although Santayana is talking about the process of an exile assimilating to his surroundings, and he is perhaps overly optimistic about the ease of this process, his discussion lists the sorts of differences we are interested in: “The exile . . . must be born again: he must change his moral climate and the inner landscape of his mind. . . . an insensible exchange of old habits for new.”38 Of course, Wittgenstein was aiming for just the opposite. It is these very differences that can instead be used by the exile as a lever toward change of certain kinds among the hosts. László Várady, a Hungarian exiled in Vienna, makes this point about music: If the exile looks around in his new country with unbiased eyes and a clear mind, he will in many cases notice things and the lack of others which the natives are unable to notice—because they have become too much used to the existing condi-

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tions or the absence of whatever is lacking. I have found this to be the case in Austrian musical life which has a tremendous reputation—and many shortcomings. I have mentioned it as an example for the exile’s ability to see with a fresh eye, with an unprejudiced approach faults and mistakes which his hosts ignore completely— thereby providing fresh impulse and inspiration for his new country.39

Whether his new country is able to accept such things graciously is another question. But it is this question that is very much at the center of this book. Are we, the natives in Wittgenstein’s new country, able to accept such “fresh impulse and inspiration”? Indeed, is the exile able to offer such things graciously? Edward Said sees this dynamic in a less idealized way: “Wilfulness, exaggeration, overstatement: these are characteristic styles of being an exile, methods for compelling the world to accept your vision—which you make more unacceptable because you are in fact unwilling to have it accepted.”40 At least one of Wittgenstein’s students in fact experienced him in just this way. J. N. Findlay, who attended classes in 1939–1940, reported: Wittgenstein like a swan simply shook every objection off his unruffled plumage. His strength lay in his unshakeable personal gnosis: once, in a discussion on imageless thought, he spoke to [me] almost like Jesus to Philip [John 14:8–9], asking whether [I] had been with him so long and had understood him so little.41

One of Wittgenstein’s students from 1938—James Taylor—went on to graduate school in philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. They corresponded, and in one of his letters back to Wittgenstein reporting on the department he wrote: “I haven’t done any missionary work yet.”42 This would seem to imply that there was a common sense that something could now be accomplished, though surely the term “missionary” was a jest, whether it originated from Wittgenstein or from Taylor. But the term “missionary” does clearly convey a sense of being among those who are quite different in important ways. When Taylor mentioned the missionary work, he confessed he was “quite aware I’m not good enough to.” What did Wittgenstein think that he could accomplish, as the missionary, preaching against the idols? Discussing in 1946 an upcoming Joint Session of the Mind Association and the Aristotelian Society meeting, Karl Britten described how Wittgenstein “railed against professional philosophers, mourned the present state of philosophy in England and asked: ‘What can one man do alone?’”43

7â•… Philosophy and Science

Part of Wittgenstein’s alienation from the modern world was embodied in his attitude toward science—his determination that science should not be a predominant or pervasive mode of understanding. This did not constitute an opposition to science, but an insistence on the proper place of science— an opposition to what is now sometimes called “scientism.” This attitude did not come from an ignorance of science: He was familiar with the physical theories of Boltzmann, Hertz, Maxwell, and Einstein. His plan to study under Boltzmann was thwarted by the latter’s suicide in 1906. Instead he trained as an engineer (1906–1908) and did significant work in aeronautics (1908–1911). He did some experimental work on the psychology of rhythm in music (1912). And he did useful work in medicine and the physiology of shock during World War II. Drury reports that Dr. R. T. Grant, with whom Wittgenstein had worked, had said “What a pity you are a philosopher and not a physiologist.”1 But Wittgenstein, along with Spengler, saw a certain progressive, scientific spirit as characteristic of our declining civilization, which he opposed. In the draft for a preface to a book that he was writing in 1930, from which I have already quoted extensively, he concluded (November 6 or 7, 1930; C&V, 7/9): It is all one to me whether the typical western scientist understands or appreciates my work since in any case he does not understand the spirit in which I write. Our civilization is characterized by the word progress. Progress in its form, it is not one of its properties that it makes progress. Typically it constructs. . . . I am not interested in constructing. . . . So I am aiming at something different than are the scientists & my thoughts move [Denkbewegung] differently than do theirs.

This leads to Wittgenstein’s attempt, during his teaching in the 1930s, to change people’s tendency to an idolatry of science. This is explicit in the 1938 lectures on aesthetics (L&C, 27–28), where Wittgenstein claims to be

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making propaganda for his style of thinking, and persuading his students against the “idol worship” of science. Indeed, Wittgenstein saw this as an instance of his philosophical method: “All that philosophy can do is to destroy idols.”2 In conjunction with the composition of a four-bar flourish of music labeled “passionate” (1931; C&V, 21/19), Wittgenstein said to himself: “I destroy, I destroy, I destroy—.”3 Waismann’s redrafts of dictations from Wittgenstein includes: “[Philosophy] overthrows idols, and it is the importance of these idols which gives it its importance.”4 In particular, Wittgenstein had a clear sense that philosophical issues could not be resolved by discoveries in science. To illustrate this, let us return briefly to the problem of the inverted spectrum, discussed in chapter 2. The language of mental states—pains and beliefs, intentions and sensations—is an established part of our ordinary discourse, having a reasonably clear use and, thus, meaning. All of this is so quite apart from any acquaintance with neurological facts. We employed the language perfectly well before we knew anything at all about the brain. Despite a long tradition of ascribing, describing, and discussing mental states, we find ourselves in some philosophical perplexities about them. For example, we wonder whether certain sensations of others are at all like our own, or whether they might not be quite different: Does he really feel more pain from a bee sting than I do, or does he just complain more? Does grass look green to her, the way it does to me, or does it look red to her, the way fire engines look to me? Wittgenstein recommends approaching this perplexity by gaining a proper synoptic view of our language.5 Philosophical perplexities arise from confusions about what we already know. Generally they arise from misuses of language urged on us by improper analogies or extensions of usage. The resolution of a philosophical problem is like the realization that we were under a misapprehension: It disappears when we get a proper synopsis of what was already familiar. It does not depend on the discovery of any new facts. In the case of the inverted spectrum, Wittgenstein holds that the identity conditions for “looks” and “feels” of things allow for and depend on ordinary descriptive comparisons of those looks and feels. How another person behaves in certain circumstances—especially how the person sincerely describes a sensation—is a criterion for what sensation that person has. When looks or feels of things are supposed to transcend all possible descriptions, we falsely imagine that something can still be compared. But, lacking identity conditions, there are no transdescriptive looks or feels of

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things. No discoveries about how things are in the brain could have any relevance to our mental language, or to the resolution of philosophical perplexities such as the inverted spectrum (November 2, 1948, LW1, §77): I imagine that a physiological explanation . . . has been found. Now we see how [it] came about. For then what sometimes occurs in the brain is the same thing that occurs when. . . . Joyous excitement: Now we understand why everybody always said. . . ! And when the explanation has been given, when the riddle has been solved—where does that leave us? It has only cleared up a question we weren’t interested in, and we are left with the fact that we use that expression, that picture, or want to use it, when the normal occasion for its use is lacking.

“Our problem is not a causal but a conceptual one” (PI II, 203/214). The same should hold for the relationship between all types of science, on the one hand, and philosophical perplexities, on the other. Philosophy and science are on different levels.6 Let us call this Wittgenstein’s insulation thesis: Science is not relevant to the resolution of philosophical problems. This is a thesis Wittgenstein espoused throughout his philosophical career: •â•‡

“Notes on Logic” (October 1913; NB, 106): “The word ‘philosophy’ ought always to designate something over or under but not beside, the natural sciences.” •â•‡ Tractatus 4.111: “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. The word ‘philosophy’ ought always to designate something over or under but not beside, the natural sciences.” •â•‡ Philosophical Investigations, §109: “It was correct that our considerations must not be scientific ones. . . . These are, of course, not empirical problems; but they are solved through an insight into the workings of our language, and that in such a way that these workings are recognized—despite an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by coming up with new discoveries, but by assembling what we have long been familiar with.” •â•‡ Philosophical Investigations, §126: “One might also give the name ‘philosophy’ to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.” And elsewhere. At least in his later work, this insulation of philosophy from science seems to result from Wittgenstein’s view that the criteria for application of philosophically perplexing concepts lie within our ordinary grasp. We only need to appreciate them properly through a synopsis of the relevant portion of our language. Nothing that science discovers will affect the application of these concepts. Thus, to understand this insulation, we must understand Wittgenstein’s view of criteria.

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Criteria, according to Wittgenstein, justify the use of a term while, in some sense, serving to fix its meaning. Where there are criteria for a concept, there can be symptoms—phenomena empirically correlated with criteria. Wittgenstein initially presents these notions through considering angina (BB, 24–25), by which he means “influenza” or “flu” (rather than angina pectoris).7 Here is a modernized and more elaborate discussion.8 People have long suffered on occasion from fever, muscular aches, and inflammation of the respiratory tract all at the same time. These things seemed to go together, and were known in combination as the flu. Because no one liked the flu, and it could occasionally be fatal, people became concerned to learn how to prevent or cure it. With the advent of electron microscopy this led to medical research that discovered the underlying cause of the sufferings— a certain kind of viral infection. Unfortunately we still do not know how to cure such an infection, and it is only sometimes possible to prevent it. Once the underlying cause was identified, it became more convenient for “flu” to refer to the underlying condition that caused the suffering, rather than to the various forms of suffering themselves. In fact, it turned out that it was possible to suffer in one or more of these ways without its being due to the flu virus, and, through the development of certain drugs, such as analgesics and decongestants, to have the flu virus without suffering (much) from it in these ways.9 To introduce Wittgenstein’s terminology, then, flu is a disease the criterion for which is the presence of a certain kind of viral infection (we ignore here the fact that there are different such viruses, and hence various strains of flu). The disease also has certain symptoms, empirically correlated with the viral infection, which are introspectable or externally detectable bodily conditions.10 We ordinarily identify the disease by its symptoms, but these are only defeasible clues to the presence of the disease itself. They are common effects of (the body’s attempt to fight) the viral infection. We can also apply this terminology to psychological phenomena, though the application is complicated by the asymmetry between the firstperson and third-person perspectives on mental states.11 When speaking of one’s own pain one employs no criteria (recall the discussion in chapter 2), whereas when speaking of another’s, one employs the behavior, especially the words, of the other as criteria. Desires are still more complicated since, though one generally employs no criteria in identifying one’s desires, one can occasionally be led to revise one’s avowal of a desire through attention to one’s own behavior: “I guess I must not want to finish this book as badly as I thought I did, considering how little I work at it.” As with

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pains, however, one ascribes desires to others on the basis of their behavior. Thus, to the extent that there are criteria for psychological phenomena, the criteria are behavior: To have a certain belief, for example, is to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. It is natural to wonder whether there are symptoms of psychological phenomena. A symptom would, of course, be a phenomenon empirically correlated with the criteria. Insofar as neuroscience isolates brain states and correlates them with psychological phenomena identified by behavioral criteria or by first-person avowal, brain states could, on this view, serve as symptoms of psychological phenomena.12 (Also, some psychological phenomena could be symptoms of others: Anger could be a symptom of the belief that one was unjustly treated.) On this view the relationship of brain states to psychological phenomena is necessarily derivative from, and always answerable to, the original behavioral criteria.13 Thus, neuroscience may help us to understand the physical correlates of the mental, but it can do nothing to change our use of mental concepts or to resolve our philosophical perplexities about the mental. Wittgenstein could put this point by saying that the mental and the physiological constitute two different language games.14 But the situation is not nearly so clear after all, as Wittgenstein makes immediately apparent in his introduction of the notions of criteria and symptoms: Which phenomena are criteria and which are symptoms is often somewhat indeterminate or a matter for discussion. Wittgenstein admits that this indeterminacy or fluctuation is common in science.15 But there is no reason to suppose that it is confined to science. There is a potential ambiguity in what Wittgenstein is admitting that is worth distinguishing here. From what Wittgenstein says, it sounds as though changes of criteria are more or less immediately possible, so that we may choose which phenomena are to count as criteria—“by making an arbitrary decision ad hoc” (BB, 25).16 Let us call this the strong thesis. A weak thesis, implied by this, and also more plausible, is the view that criteria can shift over time. This occurs commonly under the pressure of scientific research, and is not so much a matter of choice as it is a change in thinking.17 This weak thesis seems undeniable after a glance at the history of science.18 It seems, for example, to be exactly what happened in the case of flu. The syndrome of sufferings was demoted from criteria to symptoms. Since the weak thesis is implied by the strong thesis, which Wittgenstein endorses, he is certainly committed to it. If change in the criteria of concepts—conceptual change—is possible, and Wittgenstein admits that it is (OC, §65), then what is to prevent

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neuroscience from discovering enough about brain states that we should eventually see it as natural to treat brain states as criteria for mental states, and treat behavior as symptoms (paralleling the evolution of our concepts of diseases)? Identity theorists in the philosophy of mind predict that relatively precise correlations will be found, so that these shifts in criteria can occur. Alternatively, neuroscience might discover that brain states do not correlate well with (any of) the mental states we commonly ascribe. In that case ordinary talk of mental states such as pains and beliefs might come to have the status of talk of caloric fluid, phlogiston, and witches: Ordinary mental concepts would disappear, replaced by neurophysiological concepts. “Perhaps the concepts of such a language would be more suitable for understanding psychology than the concepts of our language” (PI, §577). This is in line with the prediction of so-called eliminative materialists. The approach of the identity theory here could be characterized by saying that ordinary concepts can become, or be seen as, or turn out to be, or be treated as, technical concepts. The eliminative materialist, on the other hand, proposes that ordinary concepts be replaced with technical concepts. The question whether ordinary concepts are not themselves technical concepts is raised by Wittgenstein (probably 1949; LW2, 51): “Can a psychologist teach us what seeing is? He doesn’t teach us the use of the word ‘to see.’ Is ‘seeing’ a technical term of psychology? Is ‘dog’ a technical term of zoology?—” Though the question is left unanswered there, Stephen Toulmin, who took classes from Wittgenstein in the 1940s, recalls that: “Wittgenstein . . . remarked, ‘what is or is not a cow is for the public to decide.’”19 This suggests that Wittgenstein’s answer, at least about the species names, would be that these things are not technical terms. (But the public could, after all, decide to let the scientists decide.)20 Wittgenstein warns (Z, §438): “In science it is usual to make phenomena that allow of exact measurement into defining criteria for an expression; and then one is inclined to think that now the proper meaning has been found. Innumerable confusions have arisen in this way.” The key issue in this passage is whether an ordinary concept could turn out to be, or be revealed as, a technical concept. He believes that it could not. But a separate question is whether it might come to be, or come to be treated as, a technical concept. And here Wittgenstein has no principled grounds for resisting either of these latter possibilities—indeed, he seems to accept them. If neuroscience does eventually achieve a clearer understanding of the brain, and if concepts can change or disappear, then there is no reason in principle why facts about the brain, as discovered by science, should not become quite relevant to our understanding of, and philosophical

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perplexities about, the mental. If brain states become criterial, as predicted by the identity theory, the problem of the inverted spectrum will be resolved by direct inspection of people’s brains.21 If our ordinary notions of mental states are eliminated, as predicted by eliminative materialists, then the problem will disappear, because the concepts that gave rise to it will have disappeared (and any parallel problem regarding the new concepts can be resolved by direct inspection of people’s brains). This line of argument against Wittgenstein’s insulation thesis of philosophy from science might be resisted in the following way. Since criteria serve to fix, at least in part, the meaning of the concept for which they are criteria, any change in the criteria constitutes a change in the concept. So it does not make sense to speak of changing criteria for a given, say, mental, concept. Changing the criteria changes the subject. Wittgenstein makes this point in 1930 (PR, 182): “For only the group of rules defines the sense of our signs, and any alteration (e.g. supplementation) of the rules means an alteration of the sense. Just as we can’t alter the marks [Merkmale] of a concept without altering the concept itself. (Frege.)”22 But Wittgenstein clearly does not think that this is necessarily the case, at least once he begins his assault on essentialism about concepts in the following years. Changing the criteria does not always change the concept. He clearly allows for fluctuating criteria for “angina” (in the 1933–1934 Blue Book discussion, 25) precisely because “in general we don’t use language according to strict rules”—as Frege had supposed. Should we, under pressure of Sigmund Freud’s work, for example, allow there to be unconscious desires? Should those—whatever we call them—count as desires too? But by now, if not in Wittgenstein’s time, it is widely accepted in society that this makes sense. On what grounds could one insist that unconscious desire is not desire? To hold that the concept of desire could not apply to what Freud was talking about seems excessively a priori. The proper guide would seem to be what application or extension the community finds it natural to make. How a word is currently used in ordinary language might be an acceptable guide to what is an illegitimate application of the concept at that time. But I do not see how it could be taken to govern future uses. How a word is used in ordinary language can change over time. Whether a future use of a concept is a use of the same concept as a past use seems best decided by whether the future users of that concept see themselves as using the same concept. To appropriate Wittgenstein’s antiessentialism argument about concepts: If “family resemblance” is adequate unity for things falling under a concept at a given time (call this synchronic family resemblance), why is it not an adequate unity for the identity of the concept through time (diachronic family resemblance)?

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Along these lines, but in a slightly different case, Wittgenstein remarks (February 27, 1944; C&V, 44/50): Why shouldn’t I apply words in opposition to their original usage? Doesn’t e.g. Freud/the scientist do that when he calls even an anxiety dream a wish-fulfillment dream? Where is the difference? In the scientific approach the new use is justified through a theory. And if this theory is false then the new extended use has to be given up too. But in philosophy the extended use is not supported by true or false opinions about natural processes. No fact justifies it & none can overturn it.23

Of course, there are limits (RPP2, §691): “You can vary the concept, but then you might change it beyond recognition.” Apparently there was space for the notion of unconscious propositional attitudes—unconscious wishes or beliefs—but there seems to be no space for unconscious pains—inaccessible to introspection. Whereas psychoanalysis seems to provide an instance of “shifting criteria, same concept,” perhaps modern physics provides an instance of “shifting criteria, different concept.” The physicist’s concepts of space, time and solidity have not taken hold in society. In this case it seems reasonable to insist that the physicist’s concepts are not (yet?) ours—even if they have the same linguistic labels.24 It is hard to judge cases in any timeless fashion, since what we find implausible now may come to seem plausible. In his lectures in Lent term, 1939, Wittgenstein concedes: “He might do something which we now should call ‘not playing the game’ but of which people then would say ‘why yes, that’s all right.’—It seems to be immensely unlikely and I’m not going to gamble on it, but it’s conceivable.”25 When the scenario is the synchronic one of what we would say about another practice that coexists with ours, the other practice may not seem to sufficiently resemble ours. But when we consider the diachronic scenario of how we come to behave when the former ways of behaving have died away, then the other/later practice might seem good enough.26 In this passage (LW1, §267): “A sharper concept would not be the same concept. That is: the sharper concept wouldn’t have the value for us that the blurred one does. Precisely because we would not understand people who act with total certainty when we are in doubt and uncertain,” Wittgenstein is considering a synchronic scenario. Here the sharper concept that coexists with the blurred concept may well not be the same concept. But the sharper concept that (gradually) replaces the blurred concept could well be (considered) the same. Wittgenstein takes the specific case of nerves and pain quite seriously in some reflections from 1949 (LW2, 31): “But if a way of seeing his nerves working were now found, wouldn’t that really be a means of finding

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whether he is in pain?” So far this is just testing the strong thesis, which may well seem implausible. But he goes on: “Well, it could give a new direction to the way we behave and could also correspond more or less with the old directions.” Here now we consider the possibilities of change through time. Wittgenstein continues (32): “For it is conceivable that we could have access to criteria of pretence which are not in fact accessible, and that if they became accessible to us we really would take them as criteria.” Then he seems to take it back (40): “If as I was assuming people really could see someone else’s nervous system working, and adjust their behavior toward him accordingly, then, I believe, they wouldn’t have our concept of pain (for instance) at all, although maybe a related one. Their life would simply look quite different from ours.” This is beginning to look like a case for “Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts” (PI, §79). But one of the salient facts is that it is, in a sense, out of our hands. It’s not up to us to say, from our viewpoint. “At first it could be said it is our determination whether we see something as a definite criterion of pain (for instance), whether we see all of this as a criterion of anything at all. But then we have to say that the whole thing is not our determination, but is rather a part of life” (LW2, 41). This is the possibility that is allowed by the weak thesis—not that we determine, but that life, so to speak, determines. A case that Wittgenstein takes a special interest in is the concept of “philosophy” and whether what he does counts as philosophy. Ambrose reports Wittgenstein’s lecture from 1932 or 1933: “My method throughout is to point out mistakes in language. I am going to use the word ‘philosophy’ for the activity of pointing out such mistakes. Why do I wish to call our present activity philosophy, when we also call Plato’s activity philosophy? Perhaps because of a certain analogy between them, or because of the continuous development of the subject. Or the new activity may take the place of the old because it removes mental discomforts the old was supposed to.”27 In his dictations the next year (BB, 28) Wittgenstein referred to his work as “one of the heirs of the subject which used to be called ‘philosophy.’” Now, more than seventy years later, Wittgenstein’s work is clearly considered to be “philosophy,” by both philosophers and others. In any case, even if we insist that changing the criteria changes the concept, it would not help the insulation thesis. If change of criteria automatically changes the concept, then it presumably eliminates the old concept, and thus identity theories turn out to be eliminative theories after all. Connected with the previous line of resistance is another. If certain concepts give rise to a set of philosophical puzzles, then, according to Wittgenstein, a philosophical resolution of those puzzles is to be achieved by

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gaining a proper synopsis of that region of our language. We will come to realize that we were under some grammatical misconception. If scientific research provokes conceptual change we may either jettison the concepts that gave rise to the puzzle, as eliminative materialists predict, or radically change the criteria of the concepts, as the identity theorists predict. In both cases we will be left with concepts that do not give rise to (those) philosophical puzzles. But in neither case can we be said to have provided a philosophical resolution of those puzzles. We have not resolved those puzzles; we have rejected or ignored them. (You do not resolve a man’s philosophical puzzles by shooting him or inducing amnesia.) The only philosophical resolution of puzzles is by Wittgenstein’s method, to which science can lend no assistance in any form. Wittgenstein articulates this point carefully in a manuscript (February 9, 1948; MS 137, 15a): One must just take the concept of “seeing” as one finds it; not want to refine it.—But really, why not.—Because it is not our problem to change it, to introduce (as science does) one adapted for some purpose or other, but to understand it; in order not to produce a false conception of it.

He is right that it is not the philosopher’s job to change it. This line of resistance is interesting, but I think it ultimately fails. Let us accept the conditions for a philosophical resolution as they have been stated. Science cannot, either through discovery of facts or conceptual change, provide a philosophical resolution to these philosophical puzzles. It does not follow from this, however, that science cannot provide some other kind of resolution. Wittgenstein speaks of the resolution (or dissolution) of a philosophical puzzle as one in which (PI, §133) “the philosophical problems should completely disappear”; it “releases the questioner from his problem” (PG, 193); and leads to the “vanishing of the problem” (TLP, 6.521). This is just what conceptual change produces. Consider the archaic scientific question of the specific gravity of caloric fluid. It would have been no resolution of that problem to disembowel the scientists who were puzzled by it. Yet the resolution did not require the scientific discovery of caloric fluid’s specific gravity. There was no such thing. We are comfortable saying that the problem was resolved through the rejection of the concept that gave rise to it. This was not a scientific solution of the problem (which would have required the discovery of the specific gravity), but a conceptual resolution provoked by science. Let us distinguish, then, between a scientific resolution of a scientific problem, and a conceptual resolution of that problem that is provoked by science. Wittgenstein is well aware of the importance of conceptual resolution of problems. He wrote (August 15, 1946; C&V, 48/55):

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Grasping the difficulty in its depth is what is hard. For if you interpret it in a shallow way the difficulty just remains. It has to be pulled out by the root; & that means, you have to start thinking about these things in a new way. The change is as decisive e.g. as that from the alchemical to the chemical way of thinking.—The new way of thinking is what is so hard to establish. Once the new way of thinking is established the old problems disappear; indeed it becomes hard to recapture them. For they are embedded in the way we express ourselves; & if we clothe ourselves in a new form of expression, the old problems are discarded along with the old garment.

Wittgenstein is here endorsing the weak thesis about conceptual change, and acknowledging it as a source for the conceptual resolution of problems. There seem, on analogy, to be three conceivable ways of resolving a philosophical problem: A philosophical resolution of a philosophical problem is a resolution brought about by a proper synoptic view of the language. (This is what Wittgenstein mainly expounds.) A scientific resolution of a philosophical problem is a resolution brought about by the discovery of new facts. A conceptual resolution of a philosophical problem is a resolution brought about by a change in the criteria of concepts or the replacement of concepts. In propounding the insulation thesis Wittgenstein seems mainly to be opposing the possibility of scientific resolutions of philosophical problems. We can, perhaps, agree with him in this opposition. Yet that would not establish the insulation thesis in its full generality. Science not only discovers new facts, but in doing so, as the weak thesis acknowledges, can affect old concepts. Science can be relevant to the resolution of philosophical perplexities by provoking a conceptual resolution of them. Wittgenstein often held up as a model for resolving puzzlement the work of the physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894). In his Principles of Mechanics Hertz had argued that the concept of “force” was causing confusion in physics and should be eliminated by developing mechanics without it: we have accumulated around the terms “force” [Kraft] and “electricity” more relations than can be completely reconciled amongst themselves. We have an obscure feeling of this and want to have things cleared up. Our confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradiction existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful conditions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.28

In a talk to the Cambridge Moral Science Club (February 23, 1939), Wittgenstein “cited a passage from Hertz’s Principles of Mechanics. . . . Dr

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W[ittgenstein] said that he must confess that this passage seemed to him to sum up philosophy.”29 Imagine someone replying to Hertz’s move here, using Wittgenstein’s own words (quoted above): One must just take the concept of [force] as one finds it; not want to refine [or eliminate] it.—But really, why not.—Because it is not our problem to change it, to introduce (as science does) one adapted for some purpose or other, but to understand it; in order not to produce a false conception of it.

Here we see that Wittgenstein is sometimes too careful. Sometimes it is best not to try to understand the concept, but to move on. Wittgenstein’s interest in Hertz’s treatment of force became relevant to his medical work during World War II. After doing some relatively menial work, his superiors realized his abilities and involved him in work they were doing with victims of “wound shock.” Even before Wittgenstein had arrived, the researchers were having doubts about the legitimacy and usefulness of the concept of shock. But the final report, on which Wittgenstein must have had some influence, reads: The label alone did not indicate what signs and symptoms the patient displayed, how ill he was or what treatment he required. The only common ground for diagnosis that we could detect was that the patient seemed ill. We were led, therefore, to discard the word “shock” in its varying definitions. We have not since found it to be of any value in the study of injury; it has rather been a hindrance to unbiased observation and a cause of misunderstanding.30

After the war he tied this into his philosophical reflections (December 10, 1947; RPP2, §21): “Psychological words are similar to those which pass over from everyday language into medical language. (‘Shock.’)” This suggests a willingness to consider eliminating or seriously rethinking some of our everyday psychological language. Wittgenstein sometimes seems to be denying the possibility of a conceptual resolution of puzzles in certain passages, such as (PI II, 212/221): Imagine a physiological explanation of the experience. . . . You have now introduced a new, a physiological, criterion for seeing. And this can screen the old problem from view, but not solve it.—The purpose of this paragraph however, was to bring before our view what happens when a physiological explanation is offered. The psychological concept hangs out of reach of this explanation.

But this is really only addressing the strong thesis about conceptual change. Wittgenstein is discussing a case of conceptual change through change of criteria—but it is a stipulated change of criteria: “you have now introduced a new . . . criterion.” This only shows the implausibility of the strong thesis. Conceptual change in this strong sense is nothing more than conceptual

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legislative addition. The old psychological concepts that gave rise to the philosophical puzzles remain entrenched in our thinking, even if their linguistic labels get used in a new way. It is not surprising that conceptual legislation will not resolve philosophical puzzles. All this passage really denies is the possibility of scientific solutions of philosophical puzzles. In fact, the conceptual source of philosophical perplexity was quite apparent to Wittgenstein (August 24, 1931; C&V, 15/22): We keep hearing the remark that philosophy really does not progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. Those who say this however don’t understand why it is/has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same & keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. As long as there is still a verb “to be” that looks as though it functions in the same way as “to eat” and “to drink,” as long as we still have the adjectives “identical,” “true,” “false,” “possible,” as long as we continue to talk of the river of time & an expanse of space, etc., etc., people will keep stumbling over the same cryptic difficulties & staring at something that no explanation seems capable of clearing up.31

One might suppose that Wittgenstein’s pessimism here stemmed from the fact that he had not yet become convinced of the effectiveness of his own philosophical techniques. But even sixteen years later, in 1947, Wittgenstein was unsure that his philosophical techniques were the best (and, a fortiori, the only) way of dealing with philosophical perplexities (C&V, 61/70, quoted in chapter 6): It is not by any means clear to me that I wish for a continuation of my work by others, more than a change in the way we live, making all these questions superfluous. . . . The philosopher says “Look at things like this!”—but first, that is not to say that people will look at things like this, second, he may be altogether too late with his admonition, & it’s possible too that such an admonition can achieve absolutely nothing & that the impulse towards such a change in the way things are perceived must come from another direction.

Thus, Wittgenstein clearly recognizes the possibility and even the need for conceptual resolutions of philosophical problems. The only step left toward the complete rejection of the insulation thesis is an admission that science can lead to a change in concepts that give rise to philosophical perplexity. But it is not clear that Wittgenstein was willing to take this last step with respect to neuroscience and philosophical perplexities about the mental—that is, Wittgenstein seems to doubt that neuroscience could tell us anything about the mental. The reasons for this are interesting, complicated, and controversial—and will occupy our attention in the next chapter.

8â•… The Evolution of an Idea

In August 1936 Wittgenstein moved to Norway. His fellowship from Trinity College, Cambridge, had run out, and he had already determined that moving to Russia would not work. Wittgenstein lived in the village of Skjolden, where he had previously stayed for periods varying from a few weeks to several months at a time, in 1913–1914, 1921, and 1931. From his first experience of Norway, in 1913, he found that (Letter to Russell, October 29, 1913; CL, 45) “This is the ideal place to work in”—so much so that he had a small house built for himself to live in when he was there. What he sought and found there was “peace and simplicity in the highest degree.”1 And, of course, a sort of exile, as Pinsent had noted. While staying in Norway Wittgenstein occasionally had friends visit him. The most striking example was the visit of G. E. Moore in April 1914. In September 1937 Wittgenstein’s close friend Francis Skinner visited for nearly two weeks. Skinner arrived on September 18, and on the 22nd Wittgenstein records in code that he “Lay with him two or three times.”2 This is the only written evidence there is of Wittgenstein’s sexual relations. Wittgenstein expressed feelings of shame, but the main result, perhaps not unrelated, was that he got down to work philosophically—filling almost fifty notebook pages in the following three days. On September 26, Wittgenstein described a thought experiment—one that he would return to several times: Think of two different kinds of plant, A and B, both of which yield seeds; the seeds of both kinds look exactly the same and even after the most careful investigation we can find no difference between them. But the seeds of an A-plant always produce more A-plants, the seeds of a B-plant, more B-plants. In this situation we can predict what sort of plant will grow out of such a seed only if we know which plant it has come from.—

Wittgenstein is not asserting that there are such seeds and plants, but supposing that there were:

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Are we to be satisfied with this; or should we say: “There must be a difference in the seeds themselves, otherwise they couldn’t produce different plants; their previous histories on their own can’t cause their further development unless their histories have left traces in the seeds themselves.”? But now what if we don’t discover any difference between the seeds? And the fact is: It wasn’t from the peculiarities of either seed that we made the prediction but from its previous history.—If I say: the history can’t be the cause of the development, then this doesn’t mean that I can’t predict the development from the previous histories, since that’s what I do. It means rather that we don’t call that a “causal connection.”

Clearly Wittgenstein’s interest here is in our temperament—how we are inclined to react to such a case. This is a thought experiment about us, not about seeds: And to protest: “There must be a difference in the seeds, even if we don’t discover it” . . . only shows/what a powerful urge we have to see everything in terms of cause and effect/how powerful the cause-effect schema is in us.3

How things must be and what we can be satisfied with are important themes for Wittgenstein. In the late autumn of 1947, ten years later, Wittgenstein dictated a selection of manuscript material to a typist that contains remarks so striking that they merit extensive quotation (RPP1; selected from MS 134, April 3–4, 1947): 903.╇ No supposition seems to me more natural than that there is no process in the brain correlated with associating or with thinking; so that it would be impossible to read off thought-processes from brain-processes. I mean this: if I talk or write there is, I assume, a system of impulses going out from my brain and correlated with my spoken or written thoughts. But why should the system continue further in the direction of the centre? Why should this order not proceed, so to speak, out of chaos? The case would be like the following—certain kinds of plants multiply by seed, so that a seed always produces a plant of the same kind as that from which it was produced—but nothing in the seed corresponds to the plant which comes from it; so that it is impossible to infer the properties or structure of the plant from those of the seed that it comes out of—this can only be done from the history of the seed. So an organism might come into being even out of something quite amorphous, as it were causelessly; and there is no reason why this should not really hold for out thoughts, and hence for our talking and writing. (Cf. Z, §608) 904.╇ It is thus perfectly possible that certain psychological phenomena cannot be investigated physiologically, because physiologically nothing corresponds to them. (=Z, §609)

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905.╇ I saw this man years ago; now I have seen him again, I recognize him, I remember his name. And why does there have to be a cause of this remembering in my nervous system? Why must something or other, whatever it may be, be stored-up there in any form? Why must a trace have been left behind? Why should there not be a psychological regularity to which no physiological regularity corresponds? If this upsets our concepts of causality, then it is high time they were upset. (=Z, §610) 906.╇ The prejudice in favor of psycho-physical parallelism is also a fruit of the primitive conception of grammar. For when one admits a causality between psychological phenomena, which is not mediated physiologically, one fancies that in doing so one is making admission of the existence of a soul alongside the body, a ghostly soulnature. (Cf. Z, §611) 909.╇ Why should not the initial and terminal states of a system be connected by a natural law, which does not cover the intermediary state? (Only don’t think of influence [Wirkung]!) (=Z, §613) 918.╇ . . . Well—but now that the structure of the eye is known—how does it come about that we act, react, in this way? But must there be a physiological explanation here? Why don’t we just leave explaining alone?—But you would never talk like that, if you were examining the behavior of a machine!—Well, who says that a living creature, an animal body, is a machine in this sense?—(=Z, §614)

Lest the reader think, or hope, these ideas were just a passing fancy of Wittgenstein’s, it is worth noting that these passages were among the ones that he cut from this typescript to save in a box and rearrange and perhaps revise for future use. They were published posthumously in Zettel (as indicated in the parenthetical references). What are we to make of these striking remarks? One commentator has called these passages “the Measure for Measure of Wittgenstein studies.”4 Do they hint at “mystical vitalism”?5 Is there an intellectual trajectory along which they can be located and appreciated, even if ultimately rejected? Or is he simply making a “natural” objection to reductionism about memory?6 If we are to take these remarks at face value, they foreclose the possibility that advances in the scientific understanding of the brain might eventually produce changes in our mental concepts, ending associated philosophical perplexities. Wittgenstein seems unwilling to suppose that there could be advances in the scientific understanding of the brain. Thus, the insulation thesis, at least the insulation of mental philosophy from science, remains intact. What exactly is Wittgenstein asserting (and not asserting) in these 1947 passages? In keeping with his typical style he asks many questions. Of the

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twenty-two sentences I have quoted, ten are questions. Admittedly, nearly all of them seem rhetorical—in the sense that he seems to have a certain answer in mind. But still, he is not explicitly asserting that answer. Of the remaining indicative sentences, the central ones are all couched in a nonassertoric mood: “No supposition seems to me more natural than . . .,” “The case would be like the following . . .,” “. . . might . . .,” “It is thus perfectly possible that. . . .” So caution is advised. Nevertheless, the tone of the passages is unmistakable: Wittgenstein apparently commits himself to certain possibilities, sees them even as likely and, most strikingly, seems to hope they are actualized.7 Wittgenstein mentions three different realms in which causality operates. One is the realm of the brain and its connection or relevance to mental phenomena (associating, thinking, remembering, and behavior, talking, writing). A second realm is plants and their propagation from seeds. Third, in the last remark he mentions machines. In that last remark it is clear that he wants to say different things about these different realms, since he contrasts a machine with “a living creature, an animal body.” So what differences does Wittgenstein think there are between the realms, so far as causality is concerned? In my opinion Wittgenstein is here making no claims about how things are, or might be, with plants. I think he is not using plants as another example of what he is claiming about brains. Rather, he is here using the case only to illustrate what he is claiming (is possible) for brains. We will come back to the case of plants, however. The final quoted remark suggests that Wittgenstein is making no special claims about causality at all as it relates to the realm of machines. What then is Wittgenstein saying about causality in the realm of the brain? The first thing to say is that Wittgenstein is not questioning the existence of causality in the realm of mental phenomena (“when one admits a causality between psychological phenomena,” RPP1, §906). And he is not claiming there is in the self anything like a causeless originator of action. In fact, Wittgenstein is reported by Bouwsma to have said: “there is no opposition between freedom and causality.”8 Next, Wittgenstein is dismissing the need for a correlation between brain processes and thoughts. What exactly Wittgenstein means by this sort of “correlation” will require further investigation. But the logically weakest reading of it is that thoughts needn’t be reducible to brain processes.9 That Wittgenstein intends nothing more striking than this logically weak (i.e., unambitious) reading is perhaps suggested by the following passage, found between some of those quoted earlier:

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908.╇ Imagine the following phenomenon. If I want someone to take note of a text that I recite to him, so that he can repeat it to me later, I have to give him pencil and paper; while I am speaking he makes lines, marks, on the paper; if he has to reproduce the text later he follows those marks with his eyes and recites the text. But I assume that what he has jotted down is not writing, it is not connected by rules with the words of the text; yet without these jottings he is unable to reproduce the words of the text; and if anything in it is altered, if part of it is destroyed, he gets stuck in his ‘reading’ or recites the text uncertainly or carelessly, or cannot find the words at all.—This can be imagined!—What I call jottings would not be a rendering of the text, not a translation, so to speak, in another symbolism. The text would not be stored up in the jottings. And why should it be stored up in our nervous system? (=Z, §612)

This notion of being “stored up” in the nervous system suggests that there is a type of brain state that directly corresponds with my capacity to repeat the text. This is what Wittgenstein doubts the need of here. Peter Hacker has taken this nonreducibility to be the quite limited point that Wittgenstein is making. He interprets Wittgenstein’s comments as having the limited aim of attacking Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Köhler’s particular views concerning the trace theory of memory.10 Köhler maintains that all sound theories of memory . . . will be hypotheses about physiological traces. Furthermore, each of these theories will have to assume that the properties of the traces correspond more or less to those of the processes by which they were produced.11

And Köhler goes on to assume not only that this trace must be an isomorphic reduction of the experience that produced it, but that it must endure within the brain to account for the memory it ultimately leads to: Some authors seem to think that we need not assume an entity which survives during the interval as a representative of that previous experience, and which becomes effective when present circumstances are favorable. They ought to realize what this view implies: a first event would influence a second event, even though between the two there is an empty period, no connection and no continuity. . . . I should hesitate to adopt this notion which is so strikingly at odds with all our fundamental ideas of functional interdependence or causation.12

That Wittgenstein is responding to Köhler is suggested by some similarity of phraseology and by the fact that in the original handwritten manuscript, between the typed remarks now numbered 908 and 909, there was a passage from the source manuscript not included in the typescript that read: The Gestalt psychologists have served psychology well by demonstrating the unlikelihood of certain hypotheses concerning psychological connections, but they have formulated other worthless hypotheses.13

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Although some of Wittgenstein’s remarks are clearly directed against the need for such an isomorphic connection, the interesting question is whether he goes further (is more ambitious) than that. Section 908 (=Z, §612), recently quoted, might be read as suggesting that he does not wish to go further than that. The jottings, which are not in isomorphic (reductive) correlation with the recitation, are sufficient and also, in this case, necessary for the reproduction.14 Is Wittgenstein also arguing against the need for any kind of correlation at all? Some of the language already quoted suggests so (904): “physiologically nothing corresponds to them”; and (905): “Why must something or other, whatever it may be, be stored-up there in any form?” And the discussion of seeds also suggests a more radical view. This more radical view could be called the denial of supervenience—namely, that there could be a difference in memories, or resulting plants, without any difference in brains, or seeds.15 Or, in other terminology, it could be called the denial of the need for a mediative account of causality—not only that causality need be mediated by something from which (and by itself) the origin or result could be discerned, but that the causality need be mediated by anything, any difference, at all. In the second passage from Köhler quoted above it is this more radical position that Köhler is concerned with. Wittgenstein’s disagreement with Köhler takes him beyond merely rejecting the reductive trace theory of memory. A central strategy of Wittgenstein’s is to argue against certain seemingly natural assumptions we make, or pictures that hold us captive. That is what he is doing here. The issue is, however, exactly which picture is he arguing against? Hacker takes it to be the reductive picture. I think that it is, more radically, the mediative or mechanistic picture (which encompasses the reductive picture as well).16 That the mechanistic picture does hold us captive is well illustrated by Quine and Ullian when they write: “The physicist Lord Kelvin said a century ago that he never felt he had fully explained a process until he had explained it in terms of impacts; and most of us still feel that this is explanation at its best.”17 In a passage that Wittgenstein would have been quite familiar with, Spengler writes: Helmholtz observed, in a lecture in 1869 that has become famous, that “the final aim of Natural Science is to discover the motions underlying all changes, and the motive forces thereof, that is, to resolve itself into Mechanics.” . . . The specific tendency of all Western mechanics is towards an intellectual conquest by measurement, and it is therefore obliged to look for the essence of the phenomenon in a system of constant elements that are susceptible of full and inclusive appreciation by mea-

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surement, of which Helmholtz distinguishes motion (using the word in its everyday sense) as the most important.

Spengler then goes on to comment in a way that Wittgenstein himself could have: To the physicist this definition appears unambiguous and exhaustive, but to the sceptic who has followed out the history of this scientific conviction, it is very far from being either. To the physicist, present-day mechanics is a logical system of clear, uniquely significant concepts and of simple, necessary relations, while to the other (the sceptic) it is a picture distinctive of the structure of the Western European spirit, though he admits that the picture is consistent in the highest degree and most impressively convincing. It is self-evident that no practical results and discoveries can prove anything as to the “truth” of the theory, the picture.18

That Wittgenstein’s concern is as radical (or, ambitious) as rejecting this picture is supported (if we are to draw on such evidence) by manuscript remarks of his not included in the typescript quoted above (MS 134, 104–105; originally appearing between §906 and §908): “Nothing is more important in explanations of thought and brain processes than throwing away all the old prejudices about causality. This seems to me by far the most important step.” Here we can recall the thought experiment of 1937 about plants and seeds. It focuses on our conception of causality, yet makes no mention of the brain or mental phenomena. In the Easter term of 1938, after he has returned to teaching at Cambridge, Wittgenstein draws on this thought experiment in a lecture (late May 1938): There is something like action at a distance here—which shocks people. The idea would revolutionize science. . . . Today, in case we actually discovered two seeds which we could not distinguish, but one produced a poppy and the other a rose, we should look frantically for a difference.—But in other circumstances we might give this up—give up looking for a difference. This would be a tremendous thing to do—as great as recognizing indeterminacy. We would no longer look for the difference, and so we would no longer say there must be a difference. Now (today) we have every reason to say there must be a difference. But we could imagine circumstances where we would break this tradition.19

If Wittgenstein was simply rejecting the need for reducibility or isomorphic correlation, it is doubtful that he would consider the resulting position to be “as tremendous . . . as recognizing indeterminacy.” To return to Köhler’s ideas, Wittgenstein is differing from him not only in his requirement for isomorphic correlation, but also in his requirement of mediative causality:

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If the two seeds are the same, then there is not only no difference that isomorphically corresponds to what produced or will result from the seed— there is no difference of any kind associated with what produced or will result from the seed. The remarks attributed to Wittgenstein in this lecture are notably more subtle than the blunter remarks of 1947. How do they differ? Confusion is sure to follow from phrases like: “nothing in the seed corresponds to the plant which comes from it” (RPP1, §903), or “the two plants have exactly the same seed,” or, “the seed of this (plant), which is exactly like that of the first.”20 These phrases make an assumption that appears to be far too important to be made in this context: They assume that further investigation cannot reveal any differences, and they also assume that someone, presumably standing outside our investigative context, can know this. They neatly step around the problem that negative existentials are notoriously hard to establish. Interestingly, this questionable assumption is only temporary in the case of the two phrases from the late 1930s. In the 1938 lecture he continues: “But if we discover a difference . . .”; and in the 1937 manuscript he also allows: “And now suppose that in the foregoing example someone had at last succeeded in discovering a difference. . . .” In the 1947 remarks no such concession is forthcoming. In the earlier discussions he is more likely to set the scenario as: “seeds which we could not distinguish,” or: “we can find no difference between them,” where the “could” and “can” suggest an implicit “so far.”21 When Wittgenstein says, according to the lecture notes, “now (today) we have every reason to say there must be a difference,” he is precisely articulating a point that makes his later 1947 pronouncements seem so obtuse. The later pronouncements sound as though he thinks we could, and perhaps should, just change our minds about these things—indeed, as though he has already changed his mind. It is clear that in the 1938 lecture he is sensitive to our modern temperament, but in 1947 this has dropped away.22 As puzzling as this may seem, in fact it fits with his changing conception of his audience (discussed in chapter 6). When Wittgenstein was teaching, he was concerned to address issues in light of the temperament of his readers, as the 1938 passage shows. But by the late 1940s, as his teaching drew to a close and he then finally retired, he saw himself addressing some future time, perhaps a hundred years hence, when (December 21, 1947; C&V, 64/73) “a culture will arise out of this civilization.” This may have been the audience for his 1947 remarks.

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Of course, if these phenomena actually occurred—literally indiscernible seeds producing different plants, and similarly in the brain—then we would be forced into sympathizing with Wittgenstein’s complaints in the later remarks: Psychological phenomena could not be investigated physiologically. But nothing “now (today)” can play that role, as he acknowledged earlier. Rather, his earlier point was that “in other circumstances [my emphasis] we might give this up—give up looking for a difference. . . . We could imagine circumstances where we would break with this tradition.” So, in fact, we cannot now just break with this tradition. This sounds very much like the distinction between the temperament of people now, in our scientifically obsessed civilization, and the temperament of people in an earlier (or future) era—or at any rate another era, more to Wittgenstein’s liking. But in notes of this same 1938 lecture by his student James Taylor, we find: “A cause can’t operate over a gap in time.” The picture of a cause operating over a gap is intolerable. But we can imagine ourselves settling down to it. The idea of action at a distance shocked scientists. This idea revolutionized science. To say that seeds are the same would be a revolution. Similarly with indeterminism. We could play a different game, and we would no longer be inclined to say: “There must be a difference.” There is an ideal; a direction in which investigations are pushed.23

Here we can imagine ourselves settling down to it. We could play a different game. So, at this time, Wittgenstein doesn’t suppose that the changes he seeks can only be brought about with time. But nevertheless it requires imagination, different inclinations, and a different ideal for our investigations.24 These are not things we can simply choose. Smythies’s notes record: “To begin a new method would be an enormously difficult thing.” What might Wittgenstein have had in mind by “other circumstances” in which we could “give this up”? In 1943 Wittgenstein had a conversation with Rush Rhees in which they recalled the case of the seeds and discussed this very question: We can imagine circumstances in which botanists would no longer say “there must be a difference in the structure of the seeds”; the character of their investigation would have changed, and that question would have no place in it. Circumstances which might lead to such a change, for instance: (1) the fact that the most competent scientists had searched for a long time with microscopes and with methods of chemical analysis for some differences in the structures of the seeds, and had found none; (2) the fact that seeds which looked exactly alike sometimes grew into roses, sometimes into violets and sometimes into oaks: whereas now seeds of roses and violets

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look unlike. And the fact that those seeds which did grow into roses were often very different in appearance: often they looked like violet seeds, but this made no difference—they grew into roses all the same.—Someone might then say God chooses that what comes from a rose shall grow into a rose.25

Here Wittgenstein seems only to be imagining that a failure in analysis or a complete breakdown in regularities could lead to such changes (though he doesn’t rule out others). And perhaps that is true—that the hold of modern science on our thinking can be loosened only by its failure in its own terms—given our current tendencies.26 But in addition to this case there would seem to be the deeper change in which even the occasional failure to find differences would not be treated as a failure, requiring deeper investigation, but would be accepted. What would circumstances have to be like for that to be so? One way to see what Wittgenstein is imagining is to recall his campaign against essentialism about concepts (discussed in chapter 2). Wittgenstein diagnoses us as laboring under the assumption that all instances of a concept must share an essence. We have an urge to believe that there must be such an essence, even if we have been unable to articulate it. Wittgenstein uses, most famously but not exclusively, the example of a game to suggest that in fact not all instances share an essence. He does not suppose that there has been, or need be, massive failure to find essential definitions for terms. If that were so, Socrates’ many failures would figure prominently as support for Wittgenstein’s view.27 Rather, even where there are successes, he wants to persuade us that concepts do not need to be legitimated by essences. They have all the unity that they need by the various and sundry connections and similarities that go under the (somewhat misleading) rubric “family resemblances.” (“Misleading” because “family” implies a genetic connection after all, if it is taken in a biological sense.) Read back through the series of puzzling remarks quoted earlier from Remarks of the Philosophy of Psychology, substituting the essentialist picture of concepts as the object of suspicion in place of the mediative conception of causality, and you would be surprised how much sense they make. The striking difference, however, between conceptual essentialism and mediative causality is that Wittgenstein thinks we can, and should, resist the urge to insist on essentialism in this, the actual world. And this, I think we will agree, has some plausibility to it. (That is why I called this a relatively successful example of his approach.) But we cannot (so easily?) get ourselves to feel like that about mediative causality. So, whatever it is about our circumstances that allows us “now (today)” to resist the urge to essentialism, it may

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be what we are looking for in trying to describe the “other circumstances” in which we could just give up the search for differences. Though we may find essentialism about concepts to be intuitively natural, we have no special stake in that intuition. Our uses of (at least) many concepts are not dependent on their having an essence. Essentialism is a meta-issue in relation to the role of concepts in our ordinary practices. The practices can proceed without interruption if we drop the commitment to essentialism. That is what Wittgenstein most wants us to see. (If some practices do happen to presuppose essentialism in some important way, then it is still open to Wittgenstein to be content with our requiring essences for the concepts that are central to those practices—e.g., the need to “operationalize” concepts in science.) The key to resisting the urge to essentialism lay in our ability to reduce our expectations and rest content with an account of unity, in terms of similarities and connections, that is less than we expected and thought we needed. In particular, there were few practices that would be undermined by our relinquishing the urge to essentialism. What would things have had to be like for us to be unable to relinquish this urge? Perhaps if we had been a society of Socrateses we would have been unable to relinquish essentialism. Socrates thought that practices revolving around a concept were not well founded until the concept could be defined in essentialist terms. A well-founded practice would be one in which we could certify instances of the concept by using the essence. For example, Socrates pleads with Euthyphro (Euthyphro, 6e): “Tell me then what this form itself is, so that I may look upon it, and using it as a model, say that any action of yours or another’s that is of that kind is pious, and if it is not, that it is not.” If we valued this solid foundation enough we could reform (or replace) our concepts by stipulating their essences. (One might say that this is what Plato does, in the Republic, with the concept of justice.) Though there would doubtless be some advantages to such practices that had this sort of solid foundation, they are not generally worth the costs of their pursuit. (See chapter 9 for further discussion.) So, are we a society of Socrateses when it comes to mediative causality? In a word, yes. The practices of science have become crucial practices to us, and they seem to presuppose a mediative conception of causality.28 That is, because of the centrality of a scientific viewpoint to us, we cannot give up the urge to look for, or have someone else look for, or at least believe in the existence of, mediating differences where there are different effects. Under what “other” circumstances could we “give this up”? I think there are at least three such circumstances. Each of them has some interest for the light it casts on Wittgenstein’s thinking.

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Science Might Have a Different Role within Society We tend to grant science a sort of hegemony that is not inevitable. We tend to suppose that a scientific understanding of phenomena is both possible and important for all realms, whether or not that understanding is being pursued, and regardless of our particular relation to the pursuit of that understanding. Since science presupposes a mediative conception of causality, we hold all of our uses of “cause” hostage to this understanding. If it were possible to insulate some of our ordinary practices from science and its assumptions, then nonmediative causality could be accepted. We could relax our expectations for causality (RPP I, §963): “Let us represent seeing to ourselves as something enigmatic!—without introducing any kind of physiological explanation.” This in fact seems to be how it is with respect to the search for and discovery of essences for ordinary concepts. People were able to understand ordinary concepts long before science (and philosophers) got involved in the search for their essences. In what ways are our ordinary concepts hostage to the discovery (or failure to discover) essences? More specifically, how apt are we to change our ordinary uses because of scientific discoveries? The answer is that it all depends on the practice. We have made such changes in the case of concepts like “consumption” and “leprosy.” In the former case, we have dropped the concept, popular in Dickens’s and Dostoevsky’s novels, because no single physiological condition turns out to underlie the wide variety of cases that used to be grouped under that rubric. The concept has fragmented into lung cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia, pleurisy, and so forth—each of which, save perhaps lung cancer, does have a respectable underlying essence.29 “Leprosy” was originally a generic term for chronic degenerative skin infections. After Hansen’s work in 1873 identifying the bacteria responsible for certain of these infections, the term “leprosy” came to denote the specific infection produced by that bacteria, also now labeled “Hansen’s disease.” The revised and narrowed concept excluded other superficially similar conditions that had previously been included. In contrast, there are cases like “jade” where the fact that scientists have found the concept to straddle two different minerals—jadeite and nephrite—has not undermined the usefulness of the concept for ordinary purposes, such as jewelry-making. A question of current philosophical interest is whether mental concepts such as “will,” “belief,” and “pain” are, or should be, susceptible or immune to scientific advances. In any case, the point is that there are concepts that have proven immune to revision despite the failure to discover an underlying essence, or even the

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discovery of disjoint essences, by science. Concepts and practices can have a perfectly respectable life of their own regardless of their lack of scientific underpinnings. So, in the case of causality, the question is whether there are ordinary uses of the term and associated practices that have a momentum and dignity of their own that makes them resistant to the effects of scientific investigation. In these cases, the question of whether a mediative account of their causality could be achieved would be unimportant. One could rest content with the nonmediative account. It wouldn’t be seen as a failure in need of eventual correction. We wouldn’t allow the agenda of science to set the standards of legitimacy for all our practices. We wouldn’t be held captive by a certain narrow picture of causality. It is useful to recall here that Wittgenstein worked as a gardener, in 1920 and in 1926. A gardener needs to know where the seeds came from to be able to know what they will produce. Seeds need to be carefully sorted, stored, and labeled. But the gardener has no concern for the internal structure of the seeds. Gardening is a practice that can function perfectly well without any urge toward a mediative account of the causality of seeds. Wittgenstein seems to be trying to bring us toward this ability to rest content by some of his work in the late 1930s. In his lectures on aesthetics given in 1938 he distinguishes three uses of “cause” (L&C, 13, n. 4): “(1) Experiment and statistics, (2) Reason, and (3) Mechanism.” The first two can operate without consideration of the third. And in the “Cause and Effect” discussion cited earlier, he emphasizes the different ways we have of establishing and thinking about causes (387f). In both these cases Wittgenstein is emphasizing the adequacy and independence of these practices from anything that science may add or subtract from them. The minutes to a 1940 talk to the Cambridge Moral Science Club entitled “Causal and Logical Necessities” briefly record: “The idea of causal necessity (or rather, an idea of causal necessity) was shown to be intimately connected with, and even due to, the conception of ‘tracing a mechanism.’”30 It is the emphatic parenthetical qualification that interests us here.31 Perhaps one way to give a sympathetic reading to Wittgenstein’s 1947 remarks, if they are addressed to us now, is to see them as trying to move us toward an insulation of mental causation from physiology. I think it has to be admitted that we cannot just decide to impose this insulation, the way Wittgenstein’s rhetorical questions might suggest. But perhaps we can see him as speaking proleptically, as a prophet would, in an attempt to persuade us that mental causation is worth insulating from physiology. As William Wordsworth once wrote: “Every author, as far as he is great and at the same time original, has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed: so it has been, so will it continue to be.”32 This is a challenge

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to the exile, who otherwise might suppose it is the audience’s job to learn to appreciate what the exile has to offer. Wittgenstein acknowledged this challenge (November 22, 1931; C&V, 17/25): “Someone who teaches philosophy nowadays gives his pupils foods, not because they are to his taste, but in order to change his taste.” Or perhaps Wittgenstein sees himself as addressing an audience of the future, already encultured with his way of thinking. Science Might Draw Different Conclusions This second circumstance imagines that science, pursued even with its own presuppositions about mediative causality, would come to see on its own terms that the expectation was inappropriate. The notion of mediative causality is part of the seventeenth century’s mechanistic picture of the universe as a bunch of miniature billiard balls moving and colliding. But we know that this is a false picture. Indeed, the stage was set for seeing through this illusion by Isaac Newton himself, when he characterized gravity without offering any mechanism for it (Hypotheses non fingo). We have just been too long in acknowledging that this is how all of it is: We don’t, and can’t, have mediative mechanisms all the way down. (Just as we can’t define everything in essentialist terms.) Science will eventually free itself from its own false and outmoded picture.33 This approach is also investigated by Wittgenstein in the lectures on aesthetics (L&C, 16–17): we wish to get rid of connection altogether. We wish to get rid of the notion of mechanism, and say: “It’s all concomitants.” Why “all”? You would have to specify what is a case you wouldn’t call concomitance. “Tracing a mechanism is only finding concomitance. In the end it can all be reduced to concomitance.” . . . Cf. “Physics doesn’t explain anything. It just describes cases of concomitance.” . . . (You can look on the mechanism as a case of concomitant causal phenomena. You don’t of course.) You say: “Well, this moves this, this this, this this, and so on.”

(Unfortunately these student lecture notes are pretty choppy, but lacking better evidence, we limp along with this.) That Wittgenstein is interested in this approach is also suggested by his allusion to the case of indeterminacy in his lecture in May 1938. Indeterminacy was a position reached by a science that had been committed to deterministic assumptions—although science itself came to see reasons to reject them. Science was able to relax about indeterminacy, seeing it not

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as a failure to be corrected eventually, but as an acceptable resting place. (Although there remains controversy about this among interested physicists and philosophers, it is still a good illustration of what Wittgenstein is looking for.) Scientists freed themselves from the grip of a certain picture.34 This approach fits well with Wittgenstein’s 1943 comment, quoted above, that what would lead botanists to give up saying there must be a difference between the seeds would be complete failure of (ahistorical) predictability—as there was in the case of indeterminacy. But of course this is purely a posteriori. Whether there are successes or failures simply depends on how things go. It might be suggested that science has in fact already freed itself from these mediative, mechanistic causal presuppositions—in the form of quantum mechanics. But if so, this way of thinking has certainly not influenced our temperaments, or gone very far beyond some quantum physicists. Indeed, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman has even said: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”35 Science Might Be Practiced Differently Science could be a practice that didn’t look for mechanisms at all. Although this may seem the most far-fetched of the three kinds of circumstances in which we could accept nonmediative causality, it is probably the one that is dearest to Wittgenstein’s heart. This stance was familiar to Wittgenstein from the scientific work and writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Students of Wittgenstein are generally most familiar with Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Color, in which he is critical of Goethe. But despite that, there is a much deeper affinity between the two. Wittgenstein and Goethe agree, among other things, on the preference for surveyable descriptions over explanations, a distrust of “progress,” and the value of wonder. Brian McGuinness characterizes Goethe’s influence on Wittgenstein as follows: “To say what Ludwig admired in Goethe would almost be to say what he found remarkable or worthwhile in life, so many are the themes and attitudes from Goethe that recur in his thought.”36 One of the contrasts that Spengler thought characterized the culture and the civilization stages of the Western era was the contrast between organism and mechanism. It was part of the decline of civilization that causal relations would be conceived mechanistically, rather than organically.37 Goethe, who stood near the end of the cultural stage of our era, inveighed against Newton’s mechanistic approach to the study of light, and more generally against the move away from viewing change from the

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perspective of the whole organism, and to viewing it from the perspective of the mechanics of the parts. In fact, Spengler illuminated the contrast between these approaches by reference to Goethe. Spengler lamented that: Goethe’s warning: “Do not, I beg of you, look for anything behind the phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.” had become incomprehensible to the century of Marx and Darwin.38

It is hard to find particular pithy passages from Goethe on this topic, for it is best represented by his whole approach to science. But here are a few: In reality, any attempt to express the inner nature of a thing is fruitless. What we perceive are effects, and a complete record of these effects ought to encompass this inner nature.39 It would greatly benefit knowledge, science, technology, and art if the beautiful subject of color theory could be freed from its traditional atomistic restraints and isolation, and returned to the general, dynamistic flow of life and activity.40 Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgment and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of men’s common sense.41

One subtle bit of circumstantial evidence for Goethe’s influence on Wittgenstein’s thinking here is that the poppy and rose plants mentioned by Wittgenstein in his 1938 lecture are both specifically discussed by Goethe in his scientific work “The Metamorphosis of Plants.”42 In Wittgenstein’s and Goethe’s view, mechanistic science puts us in a flawed relationship to the world. It is a perversion of the search in wonder that Goethe thought science should be: “I am here to wonder at it [Zum Erstaunen bin ich da].”43 Wittgenstein writes (November 5, 1930; C&V, 5/7): “Man has to awaken to wonder [Zum Staunen muß der Mensch . . . aufwachen]—and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.” Instead, as Spengler wrote: One day we shall no longer ask, as the Nineteenth Century asked, what are the valid laws underlying chemical affinity or diamagnetism—rather, we shall be amazed indeed that minds of the first order could ever have been completely preoccupied by questions such as these. We shall inquire whence came these forms that were prescribed for the Faustian spirit, why they had to come exclusively to this one Culture and what deep meaning there is in the fact that the figures we have obtained appeared in just this picture-like disguise. And, be it said, we have today hardly yet an inkling of how much in our reputedly objective values and experiences is only disguise, only image and expression.44

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Wittgenstein, living in the civilization stage of our era but yearning for the cultural stage, was in an awkward position when it came to expressing views on causation. He expressed them rather forcefully, but in a way that fit more comfortably in the cultural era. When he wrote (RPP1, §905, quoted above): “Why should there not be a psychological regularity to which no physiological regularity corresponds? If this upsets our concepts of causality then it is high time they were upset,” it might have been high time from the organismic perspective of one settled in a culture, but it was naive to think they could be upset in the time of a mechanistic civilization.45 “Now (today) we have every reason” to retain our mechanistic temperament. Yet Wittgenstein seemed to advocate (or await) an attitude toward mental causation that did not (need to) dig down to the level of neurophysiology. Our mental concepts would not be subject to the sort of molding that might follow from an urge for a mediative account associated with advancing science.

9â•… Science and the Mind

If mental concepts are not necessarily insulated from advances in neurophysiology, we must face the issues of what the philosophical importance of neuroscience is, and what concerns might be raised by progress in neuroscientific research. Wittgenstein has interesting insights on these issues. In our ordinary talk about ourselves we use terms like “choose,” “believe,” “myself,” and “pain,” words that have been in our vocabulary for a long time without the benefit of any sort of scientific analysis or investigation. These are sometimes called concepts of “folk psychology,” because ordinary folk use them in discussing their own and others’ mental lives. Eliminative materialists think of “mind” and associated folk-psychological concepts as just so many primitive scientific concepts—concepts designed to explain, predict, and control human behavior.1 They conjecture that such notions as belief, desire, will, and the self will go the way of such other primitive scientific concepts as caloric fluid, phlogiston, witch, and impulse. They will die, from uselessness or harmfulness, while being replaced by concepts from a more successful scientific psychological theory.2 This is a possibility that Wittgenstein was familiar with (1938; MS 160, 22r–22v): “it seemed as though ordinary forms of expression wouldn’t really accomplish what we wanted of them. As if they were an old form of historical rubbish. (A kind of old-fashioned piece of furniture) Something old-fashioned, fussy, that would be replaced by something direct, modern.” If we are willing to see folk psychology simply as a primitive attempt at science, and neuroscience as a sophisticated approach to achieving the same ends, then folk psychology’s fate would seem to be sealed.3 But perhaps we should ask, instead, whether all the concepts of folk psychology have an untainted role as science, which can be modified or replaced by sophisticated science. Do scientific purposes exhaust the purposes of folk psychology?4 In 1947 Wittgenstein wrote (December 18, 1947; RPP2, §62):

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Psychological concepts are just everyday concepts. They are not concepts newly fashioned by science for its own purposes, as are the concepts of physics and chemistry. Psychological concepts are related to those of the exact sciences as the concepts of the science of medicine are to those of old women who spend their time nursing the sick.5

(I assume Wittgenstein accidentally got the analogy in the last sentence backward. Psychological concepts are supposed to be like the concepts of the old women.) Insight into this passage is provided by Bouwsma, in his record of conversations with Wittgenstein (October 11, 1949). Wittgenstein talked about having spent two weeks as a nurse at the bedside of a nephew injured in a motorcycle accident. He and an old German servant woman took turns. This was in Roermond, Holland. These were the finest nurses he had ever met. Catholic nurses, sleepless for days, yet diligent and cheerful. This . . . struck him. . . . They’ve got something.6

What are we to make of this? Let us begin with the case of medicine. Recall the discussion of flu. The concept begins as a syndrome of sufferings. As medicine advances, it becomes the name of an underlying condition. Here we employ what we could call an “identity theory” of flu. The concept remains, but its criteria change to something more scientifically precise. (In contrast, we have the “eliminative theory” of consumption, which got replaced with other conditions—tuberculosis, pleurisy—for which the identity theory succeeded.) Insofar as our purposes are to predict the course of suffering, prevent the suffering from spreading to others, and cure the suffering, this change in criteria is a valuable one. Since these were largely our purposes, this conceptual change occurred. But these are not our only purposes, for we are sometimes concerned simply to comfort the suffering, and this is not a purpose that is advanced by focusing on the underlying condition.7 Indeed, focusing on the underlying condition abstracts from the suffering altogether, seeing it as a peripheral symptom. Wittgenstein was concerned about this tendency in medicine. In 1948 he told his friend Drury, a former student who was working as a doctor: “Always take a chair and sit down by the patient’s bedside: don’t stand at the end of the bed in a dictatorial attitude. Let your patients feel they have time to talk to you.”8 And Rush Rhees comments on this advice by relating that Wittgenstein may have been half remembering his own experience as a patient in Guy’s Hospital after an operation for removal of the gall-bladder, in 1942. He spoke to me especially of the unimaginativeness of one young doctor who would “make

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the rounds” of the ward in the morning: “He would come and stand by my bed, and talk to me—a somewhat elderly professor—in a way in which I would never talk to a schoolboy: ‘Well: how are you?’” As Wittgenstein imitated the voice, it might have been a quarter-master-sergeant.9

The importance of comforting the sick and injured is, or should be, a prominent issue in the field of medicine. At one time, offering comfort was part of the tradition of doctors. Bedside manner had real importance. But now so much is known about prevention and cure that relatively little attention is given to comfort. This shift in attention is reasonable in many respects, though it has doubtless gone too far, since many illnesses and injuries still have no, or no immediate, cure, and require primarily comfort. To the extent that traditional concepts of health care embody a concern for comfort and suffering, their whole purpose will not be subsumed by the concepts of scientific medicine. If they are nevertheless replaced by the concepts of scientific medicine, something valuable may be lost.10 Scientific purposes of prediction and control are not the only respectable purposes, yet they tend toward a hegemony that should be resisted. In 1947 Wittgenstein wrote (April 13, 1947; C&V, 60/69): “Science: enrichment and impoverishment. The one method elbows all other aside. Compared with this they all seem paltry, preliminary stages at best.”11 When we consider concepts of earlier, primitive physics or chemistry, it is fairly clear that these are attempts at science and nothing more. Thus, it is perfectly appropriate that they should wither in the face of modern science. Wittgenstein himself makes this point. But are the purposes of folk psychology exhausted by the purposes of science—namely, explanation, prediction, and control? Eliminative materialists suppose that they are. Paul Churchland appeals to the “inductive lesson from our conceptual past”: “the vast majority of our past folk conceptions have been . . . exploded. All except folk psychology, which survives to this day, and has only recently begun to feel pressure.”12 But the induction will be educational only if folk psychology is analogous to primitive sciences. Wittgenstein seems to be suggesting that it is not. There is something more to folk psychology than will be found in exact science, just as there is something more to caring for the sick than can be found in the science of medicine. What is that “something more”? Certain concepts of folk psychology might be necessary for rational agency in the world. For the sake of illustration, let us focus on the concept of the self, or I. The claim that the concept of the self is a necessary concept for agency could be made in two ways by Wittgenstein.

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First, there is the Kantian approach found in his earliest work, through the influence of Schopenhauer. In the first week of August, 1916, Wittgenstein recorded the following thoughts (NB, 79–80): Good and evil only enter [the world] through the subject. And the subject is not part of the world, but a boundary of the world. It would be possible to say (à la Schopenhauer): It is not the world of idea that is good or evil; but the willing subject. . . . The thinking subject is surely mere illusion. But the willing subject exists. If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which I call the I, and which is the bearer of ethics.

We can construct an argument for Wittgenstein along the following lines. Agency requires the ability to evaluate actual and possible behavior, deliberate about how to behave, make decisions, and form intentions. These are all functions of folk psychology. They are practical functions that accompany its admittedly scientific functions of explanation and prediction.13 And they are, according to Wittgenstein, dependent on the concept of the willing self. But, as Wittgenstein also sees, the willing self is not part of the world and, hence, there is no reason to suppose it will be countenanced by neuroscience. Neuroscience may come to understand us completely as objects, without being able to understand us as subjects or agents. The point is not that neuroscience may not be able to explain how we act. The point is that it cannot encompass the parts of our conceptual scheme necessary for our being deliberative and evaluative agents. Yet these parts of our conceptual scheme are parts of folk psychology.14 Wittgenstein could also have made this case with the tools of his later views. The defense would involve showing the pervasiveness of the concept of the self, or I, and other agent-centered concepts in a network of practical language games that would likely collapse without them. In 1949 Wittgenstein wrote (LW2, 43–44): “The basic concepts are interwoven so closely with what is most fundamental in our way of living that they are therefore unassailable.”15 If, as Wittgenstein seems to suppose, neuroscience is fated to be incomplete with respect to our current purposes and self-conceptions (which have been with us since sometime after the era of the Homeric Greeks), there are two possibilities for our conceptual future: These practical purposes of folk psychology and aspects of ourselves will live on, immune to the progress of science; or they will wither—not because they will be replaced by sophisticated scientific concepts that have the same purpose, but because they will find no place in scientific purposes and so be choked by excessive scientism.16 Call this latter case incompatibilism.

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This latter possibility we may find fearful: Science threatens to dehumanize us by getting us to forget, and thus excising, our nature as agents in the world. In this light one can perhaps begin to appreciate Wittgenstein’s pessimistic remark (January 7, 1947; C&V, 56/64): It is not e.g. absurd to believe that the scientific & technological age is the beginning of the end for humanity, that the idea of Great Progress is a bedazzlement, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge & that humanity, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means clear that this is not how things are.

The consequence for human agency is drawn by contemporary philosopher Daniel Dennett: “We, as persons, cannot adopt exclusive mechanism (by eliminating the intentional stance altogether).” To quote another contemporary’s characterization of Dennett’s position: “To do this is to plunge into the abyss, since the concept of personhood stands at the very center of our conception of ourselves and our place in the universe.”17 Of course, as the ancient Roman poet Lucretius would have argued (mimicking the thoughts of Epicurus), this seems fearful to us now only because of the practical purposes we now have, and once we lose those purposes there will be nothing fearful in their absence.18 Although this may be true, it is certainly no consolation now, even if there will be no need for consolation then. It only adds, now, a fear of the loss of concern for our practical purposes to the fear of the loss of the practical purposes themselves. We will still be left with a reason, now, to fear the hegemony of neuroscience. The enormity of the changes likely to follow from a mature neuroscientific understanding is not denied by the eliminative materialists—indeed, it is savored. The neuroscientific revolution is compared, by Stich and by Patricia Churchland, to the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions—freeing us from the primitive superstitions of the past and setting us on a journey of high intellectual adventure.19 Set in this way, the comparison makes Wittgenstein and any allies look like reactionary fools (or at least old-fashioned exiles). But in fact, Wittgenstein had a high regard for the ideas of Copernicus and Darwin.20 The problem lies with the alleged analogy. Though these other revolutions radically changed our conception of our place in the universe, they did not obviously threaten our self-conception as rational agents. It is this self-conception that one might hold to be crucial and endangered. What must lie behind the optimism of the eliminative materialists is a belief that increased knowledge is inevitably a good thing. This is a value judgment that merits careful examination. What is striking is that it

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receives none.21 Do we all believe that we should follow science wherever it may lead, even if it were granted that that had always proven beneficial in the past? The eliminativists tell us of the glorious achievements that might result, in ways that distract our attention from the great uncertainty involved. But the uncertainty remains, even in the glorious descriptions: for example, “We may be poised to begin a similar adventure,” “discovered facts of brain function might be no bad thing,” “it is at least conceivable that” our current ideas will come to seem backward, and so on.22 When so much is at stake, is the best strategy to forge ahead? Those who believe in progress will think so. But Wittgenstein did not believe in progress. In addition to the remarks for the 1930 draft preface quoted previously, recall the motto to the Philosophical Investigations, quoting from Nestroy: “The trouble about progress is that it looks much greater than it really is.” Rhees cites comments that Wittgenstein made in 1943 at the discussion of a paper given in Swansea: In the discussion Wittgenstein said that when there is a change in the conditions in which people live, we may call it progress because it opens up new opportunities. But in the course of this change, opportunities which were there before may be lost. In one way it was progress, in another it was decline. A historical change may be progress and also be ruin. There is no method of weighing one against the other to justify you in speaking of “progress on the whole.”23

Of course, we might think Wittgenstein goes too far in the direction of pessimism. As I see it, the key problems are whether the possession of knowledge can itself be harmful (apart from the dangers of abuse), and, if so, how best to manage the risk of that harm. Can the mere possession of knowledge be harmful? Here are some examples of how it can: A seriously ill man may be better off not knowing his chances of dying. The knowledge might kill him. Knowledge of evil in the world may lead to the loss of someone’s innocence. That is not obviously good. Christopher Cherniak tells a story in which learning a certain, apparently Gödelian, truth causes one to lapse into a coma.24 That would not be good either. I may learn of and covet possibilities that I am in fact unable to achieve. This creates unproductive frustration.25 These kinds of cases suggest how, in seeking certain kinds of knowledge, one may be “falling into a trap.” Nietzsche warns: Our whole attitude toward nature, the way we violate her with the aid of machines and the heedless inventiveness of our technicians and engineers, is hubris. . . . Our attitude toward ourselves is hubris, for we experiment with ourselves in a way we

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would never permit ourselves to experiment with animals and, carried away by curiosity, we cheerfully vivisect our souls. . . . We violate ourselves nowadays, no doubt of it, we nutcrackers of the soul, ever questioning and questionable, as if life were nothing but cracking nuts.26

Eliminative materialists as nutcrackers of the soul! If folk-psychological concepts and purposes would wither because of the advance of neuroscientific knowledge, this raises the value question of how best to manage the risk of that harm.27 Suppose we take a consequentialist approach to this problem. A simplistic evaluation would compare the expected long-term consequences of the pursuit of neuroscience with the consequences of not pursuing neuroscience.28 By examining the status quo we know basically what are the consequences of not pursuing neuroscientific research further (barring the appearance of unforeseen “needs” for neuroscientific knowledge). Currently the main foreseeable applications of neuroscience are in the treatment of mental and emotional defects.29 These applications affect relatively few people, though the effect is undoubtedly significant for them. However, just as Wittgenstein warned of the dangers of an overly scientific approach to treating medical conditions, so too we should be wary of an overly scientific approach to treating mental conditions. In 1947 or 1948 Drury lent Wittgenstein Sargant and Slater’s Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry, which was the basis for hospital treatment at the time. Wittgenstein commented: This is an excellent book. I like the spirit in which it is written. . . . I can quite understand that you would adopt the attitude “Let’s see now what these methods of treatment will accomplish.” I don’t want for one moment to underestimate the importance of the work you are doing; but don’t ever let yourself think that all human problems can be solved in this way.30

Also, against any benefits here have to be weighed the potential threat to rational agency of all people (as well as the dangers of abuse). How are these to be compared with one another? Typically consequentialists would employ the measures of happiness or desire-satisfaction. But there is a problem with employing these measures here, since they involve the concepts of folk psychology. Our means for comparing policies are themselves called into question by one of the policies. Presumably happiness and desire-satisfaction will themselves be displaced by other concepts more neurophysically hygienic. Perhaps there is a place after all for Jeremy Bentham’s utility calculus, in which pleasure and pain are virtually measurable things in the brain. This could then solve the philosophical perplexity

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of interpersonal comparison, and provide a basis for what used to be called, and would now again be appropriately labeled, “moral science.” Whether one employs current measures or advanced neuroscientific ones, however, it is not obvious that humankind will be better off by pursuing neuroscience. If incompatibilism is true, do people want science to continue a policy that, by the eliminativists’ own admission, threatens rational agency? To put the issue in Wittgenstein’s terms: Which form of life do we want to live in? Reflecting on this very question during his Lent term, 1939, lectures, Wittgenstein is reported as saying: Although it is conceivable that if we had a mechanism that would show all this, we would change our terminology—and say, “He’s as much compelled as if a policeman shoved him.” We’d give up this distinction then; and if we did, I would be very sorry.31

There is no a priori reason to suppose that all conceptual changes induced by the advance of science will be beneficial. The proper attitude toward such changes is not itself a matter to be resolved through further research. Yet, there was another possibility besides incompatibilism. Perhaps the concepts and purposes of folk psychology will live on in spite of, and in coexistence with, neuroscientific progress. Call this compatibilism.32 This might happen in one of two ways: The conceptual influence of neuroscientific advances might be limited to the scientific practice of neuroscience and not find its way into ordinary language. This sort of compatibilism seems to hold for the relationship between contemporary physics and ordinary thinking with respect to the concepts of solidity, space, and time.33 These ordinary concepts seem to have no place in contemporary physics. In the case of medicine one might say that the purpose of comfort has been delegated to the nurses, while the doctors have focused on cure. Wittgenstein opts for this kind of compatibilism between an ordinary and a psychoanalytic explanation in a 1938 lecture (L&C, 23). Or instead it might happen that neuroscientific progress influences ordinary thinking, not by supplanting folk psychology, but by supplementing it. If folk psychology has practical as well as predictive and explanatory purposes, then folk-psychological concepts may be transformed into neuroscientific concepts for the predictive and explanatory purposes, but remain unaffected for the deliberative purposes. Folk and neuroscientific concepts would exist in each person, for different purposes—rather like bilingualism.34 This raises the problem of the extent to which practical and predictive purposes can be disentangled. Each of us is both agent and investigator of others. Are those two different jobs? Probably not, since investigation

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itself involves agency and agency must be informed by investigation. The purposes seem to be too intertwined.35 If the practical purposes of folk psychology are tied up with a primitive and defective science of behavior, the practical purposes may themselves be infected by this defect and deserving of displacement. One might, for example, hold that all the various functions of religious language are undermined by the failure of religion as a scientific enterprise: The Genesis story of creation is false as science; so all religious concepts tied to the Genesis story are defective. But we should be skeptical of this kind of guilt by association. The practice of religion has not by any means died out under the influence of science, even among respected scientists. Christians, for example, have reacted in various ways to the encroachment of science—some resisting, others accommodating it. How can we determine whether compatibilism or incompatibilism will hold for the relationship between folk psychology and neuroscience? One might think that the Kantian transcendental argument (offered earlier) shows that folk psychology could not be displaced. But that would be mistaken. All that argument shows is the cost of such a displacement: To displace folk psychology is to risk losing our self-conception as rational agents. Nothing could prove that the members of the species Homo sapiens must be, or must think of themselves as, rational agents.36 Whether compatibilism or incompatibilism will be borne out is not a philosophical but a sociological question. Wittgenstein said to Bouwsma (August 10, 1949): In any case, as I see it now, the real puzzle is that our attitudes, holding people responsible, praising, blaming, might be quite different from what they are, if we could actually see the succession of causes at work. And this is about all there is to say. As it is now, we do have these attitudes. What would our attitudes be if we knew so-and-so? Who knows?37

For Wittgenstein this is a question of the evolution of and relationships between language games. Two weeks before his death, Wittgenstein recorded in his notebook (April 15, 1951; LW2, 95): And now the question remains whether we would give up our language-game which rests on “imponderable evidence” and frequently leads to uncertainty, if it were possible to exchange it for a more exact one which by and large would have similar consequences. For instance, we could work with a mechanical “lie detector” and redefine a lie as that which causes a deflection on the lie detector. So the question is: Would we change our way of living if this or that were provided for us?—And how could I answer that?

Indeed. As a philosopher he is in no position to answer that.

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Entailment and exclusionary relationships do not hold between language games. The history of the relationship between science and religion confirms this. But, on the other hand, logical compatibility between language games need not prevent the hegemony of one over the other. Wittgenstein claims that the purposes of folk psychology go beyond those of any neuroscientific psychology. If incompatibilism is true, neuroscientific progress may lead to profound changes in human nature. Wittgenstein warns against these. If compatibilism is true, then eliminative materialists are making much ado about nothing much.

10â•… Das erlösende Wort

Wittgenstein was not easily distracted from his work. During World War I, within two weeks of being stationed at Krakow, he was making philosophical entries in his notebooks. In his coded notebooks, he would comment on the adverse conditions, physical—extreme cold, unceasing cannon fire—as well as spiritual. He would also comment on how his philosophical work was progressing. Often the adverse conditions and the philosophical work went together, as he found such work a kind of consolation (October 17, 1914; GT, 32): “Remember how great the grace of work is.” After almost two months of philosophical entries, Wittgenstein took stock in his coded remarks (October 17, 1914): “Yesterday worked very hard. The knot is tightening more and more, but I have found no solution [Lösung]. . . . Will the erlösende thought come to me, will it come??!!” A month later he returns to this concern (November 21; GT, 44): “Worked a considerable amount. But still I can never express the one erlösende word. I go round about it and get very close, but still I cannot lay hold of it itself.” And the next day: “The erlösende word not expressed. Yesterday it was right on the tip of my tongue. But then it disappears again.” But this concern, or perhaps we should say this way of putting the concern, didn’t emerge in his philosophical notebooks until January 20, 1915 (NB, 39): “The erlösende word—?” and then six months later, more articulately (June 3; NB, 54): “The erlösende word still hasn’t yet been spoken.” When Wittgenstein’s philosophical notebooks from this period were first published and translated in 1961, Anscombe translated erlösende as “key.” There is no reason to suppose she paused over this translation— “key” makes sense in the contexts, though it is not a dictionary translation. But the word has resonances in German that are lost with that translation. For instance, when Job says (Job 19:25, KJV): “I know that my redeemer liveth,” Luther’s German Bible renders the Hebrew for “redeemer” as Erlöser. Similarly, when the Psalmist calls on the Lord (Psalm 19:14, KJV) as “my

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strength, and my redeemer,” Luther again has it as Erlöser.1 And, indeed, the coded notebooks, where the word first arises, also show Wittgenstein calling on God regularly. So the search for the erlösende word takes on the status of something like a mission. Wittgenstein then drops the word from his work, and reflections on his work, up through the Tractatus. We never hear whether he found “the one erlösende word,” or even what it would have been. But, at least in this early period, it seems to have been, for Wittgenstein, something that would constitute a solution (Lösung) to his philosophical problems.2 We could conjecture that the erlösende word of the Tractatus turned out to be the command of silence—as recommended in proposition 7: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” When writing to Ludwig von Ficker, a prospective publisher for the Tractatus, Wittgenstein explained: I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which however, I’ll write to you now because they might be a key [Schlüssel] for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one. For the Ethical is delimited from within, as it were, by my book; and I’m convinced that, strictly speaking, it can ONLY be delimited in this way. In brief, I think: All of that which many are babbling today, I have defined in my book by remaining silent about it.3

Or, one might say, only silence can redeem such babbling. But upon Wittgenstein’s return to philosophical work in 1929, he resumed the search. In a notebook in 1929, he writes: “The task of philosophy is to find the erlösende word.” And then in another notebook from the same year he repeats this sentence, adding: “The erlösende word is the solution of a philosophical problem.”4 In conversation with Schlick Wittgenstein comments: “Everything we do consists in trying to find the erlösende word.”5 On January 18, 1931, he elaborated: “The philosopher strives to find the erlösende word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up until now has intangibly weighed down our consciousness.” And then he uses my favorite comparison in all of his writing: “It is as if one had a hair on one’s tongue; one feels it but cannot grasp/seize it, and therefore cannot get rid of it.” Here the earlier description of having the erlösende word on the tip of his tongue, but not quite found, is reversed—now there is something to be gotten rid of, which usually lies near the back of the tongue, by means of the erlösende word. He continues: “The philosopher delivers the word to us with which one/I can express the thing and render it harmless.”6

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Wittgenstein liked these three sentences from 1931 so well that they reappear in a typescript based on the manuscript (TS 211, 158) and are preserved among cuttings taken from that (TS 212, 1115). Then they are used in his so-called Big Typescript of 1933.7 Portions or slight modifications of these sentences appear in typescripts (TS 220, 83; TS 238, 11; TS 239, 84) that serve as early drafts of the Investigations, but the phrase does not make it all the way into the Investigations. Yet I believe the idea retains a role in the Investigations nonetheless. Starting with the opening section of the Investigations (§1), Wittgenstein states that “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” In the later notes collected as On Certainty (§34) he reiterates: “But these explanations must after all come to an end.” This is a truism—Wittgenstein might have called it a rule of grammar—but it is a truism that, oddly enough, is easy to lose sight of. It’s the kind of thing of which we need to be reminded (PI, §127): “The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.” What is that purpose? Well, for instance, we tend to push too far in our desire to understand. Yet not everything can get explained (Z, §315): “Why do you demand explanations? If they are given you, you will once more be facing a terminus. They cannot get you any further than you are at present.” Indeed, “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” And the truism holds not just for explanations, but for reasons (PI, §326): “the chain of reasons has an end”; justifications (OC, §192): “justification comes to an end”; grounds (OC, §204): “giving grounds . . . comes to an end”; and definitions. In each case, the press for further explanations, reasons, justifications, grounds, definitions leads us ultimately either in a circle or into an infinite regress. That is the truism. Being truisms, these claims are apt for inclusion in Wittgenstein’s philosophical remarks. He holds (PI, §599): “Philosophy only states what everyone admits.” And as a preface to his 1941 discussions with Robert Thouless: “Wittgenstein started by saying that all statements he would make would be obviously true. If I could challenge any of them he would have to give way. Might seem trivial and unimportant because so obviously true. But going over things already known to and accepted by me, he would make me see things in a new way.”8 If we accept these truisms, then we will come to realize that it is untenable to feel that there must be a further explanation, reason, justification, ground, definition in every situation. And so we can relax, content that, say, some words cannot, or may not, be given essentialist definitions. But Wittgenstein’s use of the truisms is generally more ambitious than this. For he usually wants to insist that justification, say, ends not only somewhere,

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but sooner than we expected. It ends here (PI, §217): “If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do.’” For Wittgenstein, it is important not only that we stop, but where we stop. In a lecture on April 28, 1947, Wittgenstein is reported by one student to have said: “It is important in philosophy to know when to stop—when not to ask a question.” Another student reports: “One of the great difficulties in philosophy is to know where to stop.”9 Or, more famously (Z, §314): “The difficulty here is: to stop.” Stopping at the right place—acknowledging bedrock—is crucial. This is the erlösende word: “Genug!”—“Enough!” Or rather, the erlösende word is whatever gets us to stop. The temptation to push further “has intangibly weighed down our consciousness.” If I can say “Enough!” I “render it harmless.” Enough explaining, justifying, defining. Wittgenstein writes (MS 115, 30): “Ease of mind begins in philosophy when the erlösende word is found.” I have done all I need to do. I can rest content where I am now. I am redeemed, liberated, from misguided temptation. But, given our temptations, where I reach bedrock is not any kind of truism. And, indeed, Wittgenstein’s places to halt can be quite controversial. For example, it seems as though we need a private experience of pain to justify the expression of pain. (See chapter 2.) Wittgenstein would have us do without a private experience of pain. Well, Wittgenstein might say, justifications have to end somewhere (PI, §289): “To use a word without justification does not mean to use it without right.” But why should that be the point where justification comes to an end? “We are inclined to say there must be a reason where there is no reason. If I say ‘How do you know that you see red?’—there is no justification.”10 Consider (BB 73): “He looks for a justification of his description [of an object as brown] where there is none. (Just as in the case when a man believes that the chain of reasons must be endless . . .).” And (OC, §110): “As if giving grounds did not come to an end sometime.” The claim that “there is none” right there is much more ambitious than the claim that the chain cannot be endless. It is no truism. A parallel dispute is played out in Wittgenstein’s discussion of the seeds (see chapter 8). Wittgenstein’s case evokes our feeling that there must be a difference between the seeds, which would explain their producing different plants. He writes (RPP1 §909): “But must there be a physiological explanation here? Why don’t we just leave explaining alone?” Well, granted, we could leave explaining alone here—after all, explanations have to come to an end somewhere. But why here? No doubt it is some modern mechanistic

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scientific urge that drives us beyond this point, but to label it as such is not to undermine or delegitimize it. Where we are willing to halt the chain is a matter of temperament. That Wittgenstein can rest content with halting the chain sooner than many of us is an important respect in which his (C&V, 6–7/8–9) “spirit is . . . different from that of the prevailing European and American civilization.” For “the typical western scientist . . . will not in any case understand the spirit in which” he writes. His “way of thinking is different from theirs.” That Wittgenstein can say “enough!” when he can is an important respect in which his temperament is at odds with ours—it is that of an exile. Suppressing the urge to explain, justify: We might say the urge is a natural one, but Wittgenstein sees it as a cultivated urge (or rather, a civilized urge—in a bad sense). But it is clearly this urge that he sets himself against (July 3, 1941; C&V, 40/46): “People who are constantly asking ‘why’ are like tourists, who stand in front of a building, reading Baedeker, & through reading about the history of the building’s construction etc etc are prevented from seeing it.” Wittgenstein put the point most clearly, for our purposes, in an unpublished typescript (January 1, 1933; TS 219, 8): “That is the disastrous thing about the scientific way of thinking (which today possesses the whole world), that it wants to respond to every disquietude with an explanation.”11 This is certainly not a modern approach to things.12 Wittgenstein’s later mentions of the erlösende word recognize an element of contingency: “Whoever does not have these assumptions, for that person it is not the erlösende word.”13 Recall Wittgenstein’s comments about showing the fly the way out of the fly bottle (quoted in chapter 2): “First of all, it is not at all clear that this will help every fly. What happens to work with me doesn’t work with him (Prof. Moore)—works with me now, and may not work with me tomorrow.” So too with the erlösende word—what works may well depend on the person and the person’s state of mind. As Wittgenstein put it in the May 1938 lecture (quoted in chapter 8): “Now (today) we have every reason to say there must be a difference [between the seeds]. But we could imagine circumstances where we would break this tradition.” The erlösende word does not work in the face of all temptations—in all traditions—and can only be effectively spoken under the right circumstances. It may not easily be understood by us. Perhaps “only a small circle of people . . . to which I turn . . . because they form my cultural circle, as it were my fellow countrymen in contrast to the others who are foreign to me.” Or: “perhaps in a hundred years people will really want what I am writing.”

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Although Wittgenstein’s utterance of the erlösende word is not easily understood, it does fit into a certain trajectory of thought. I would like to conclude this chapter by tracing some notable points in this trajectory— texts that raise the issue, and people or characters who have been willing to say “enough” before the rest of us. The reader will likely find them to be somewhat alien, but that is precisely my point. Divine-Command Theories Wittgenstein’s concern about explanation goes back to his early work during World War I. The night of May 5–6, 1916, Wittgenstein served his first night-duty at a forward observation post, by his own request (May 4, 1916; GT, 70): “Perhaps the nearness of death will bring light into my life. May God enlighten me. . . . God be with me. Amen.” The morning after (May 6) he recorded in code on the left side of his notebook: “In constant danger of my life. By the grace of God the night went well. From time to time I despair. This is the fault of a false view of life [falschen Lebensauffassung].” On the right side, in plain script (NB, 72): At bottom, the whole Weltanschauung [worldview] of the moderns involves the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are explanations of natural phenomena. In this way they stop short at the laws of nature as at something impregnable as men of former times did at God and fate. And both are right and wrong. The older ones are indeed clearer in the sense that they acknowledge a clear terminus, while with the new system it is supposed to look as if everything had a foundation.

(These passages are then carried over with only very minor changes into the Tractatus 6.371–6.372.) The “false view of life” seems readily connected with the “whole worldview of the moderns.” In contrast, there is the view of “former times . . . the older ones” that God and fate are a stopping point, and a spiritual resting place. Wittgenstein says “both are right and wrong,” though he characterizes the modern view as an “illusion” that “is supposed to look” a certain way. Yet he clearly sees the differences as matters of temperament.14 He makes his own temperament clear, but he has no argument against the other temperament. He finds it to be a “false view of life,” but only in the sense that it lets him down in his time of need—not that it is incorrect, and not that it could not serve someone else. On December 17, 1930, while in Vienna between academic terms, Wittgenstein met with Moritz Schlick to discuss Schlick’s just-published book

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Fragen der Ethik (Problems of Ethics). Waismann’s notes of the meeting record Wittgenstein’s comments: Schlick says that in theological ethics there used to be two conceptions of the essence of the good: according to the shallower interpretation the good is good because it is what God wants; according to the profounder interpretation God wants the good because it is good. I think that the first interpretation is the profounder one: what God commands, that is good. For it cuts off the way to any explanation “why” it is good, while the second is the shallow, rationalist one, which proceeds “as if” you could give reasons for what is good. The first conception says clearly that the essence of the good has nothing to do with facts and hence cannot be explained by any proposition. If there is any proposition expressing precisely what I think, it is the proposition “What God commands, that is good.”15

It would be hard to find a clearer statement of Euthyphro’s position.16 In that Platonic dialogue, after Euthyphro has proposed the view (9e) that “the pious is what all the gods love,” Socrates asks him this question of conceptual priority (10a): “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?” It is clear what Euthyphro should say—that it is pious because it is being loved by the gods—just what Wittgenstein asserted. But Euthyphro does not understand the question. After a marginally helpful explanation, Socrates returns with the question (10d): “Is it being loved then because it is pious, or for some other reason?” This is clearly a trick question, for it builds in the presupposition that it is being loved for some reason or other. Euthyphro does not notice the trick, and quickly answers “For no other reason.” After all, if you have to come up with a reason, that seems the most plausible one. When Socrates draws out the unfortunate implication for his view, Euthyphro responds, “Apparently.” Euthyphro sees something has gone wrong, but can’t put his finger on it. The trick that Socrates plays, the presupposition that he builds in, is precisely the hidden assumption that many of us would accept—that the gods act for reasons, that commands can be justified. Euthyphro should have responded: “For no reason at all, Socrates.” That response “cuts off the way to any explanation ‘why’ it is good.” Socrates is so gripped by the urge to justify that either he does not himself see that he is presupposing that, or else he is cynically using but concealing that presupposition from Euthyphro. Here again we see the accuracy of Wittgenstein’s remark: “I can characterize my standpoint no better than by saying that it is the antithetical standpoint to the one occupied by Socrates in the Platonic dialogues.”17

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Wittgenstein stands with Euthyphro and the divine-command tradition in ethics. Job’s Suffering The book of Job in the Hebrew Bible tells the story of a righteous man who suffers greatly and how he responds to that suffering.18 The details will be part of our discussion, but it appears that God is goaded by Satan into allowing Job to be tested, to see if his righteousness is deeply ingrained, or whether it is only a result of his healthy and prosperous life. Thus, his health and prosperity are taken from him to see if he will remain faithful to God, or will instead curse God. The bulk of the story is taken up with conversations between Job and his friends about the meaning of his suffering. Finally God says some things in response to Job and his friends, and then the story concludes with God rewarding Job for his faithfulness. The story is very rich with ideas and yet difficult to understand. It is often seen as relevant to the popular question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” That seems like a natural question. A traditional answer is that people who suffer must have done something wrong to deserve their suffering. The book of Job opens with an unnamed narrator stating that Job (1:1 KJV) “was perfect and upright . . . and feared God and eschewed evil.” Then God brags to Satan that Job is (1:8 and 2:3) “a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God and esheweth evil.”19 So from the omniscient perspective there is no question of Job having sinned. The suffering is only a test—an experiment, really. And even after the suffering commences, the narrator assures us that (1:22) “Job committed no sin,” and (2:10) “uttered no sinful word.” Of course, Job and his friends do not occupy an omniscient perspective and are not privy to this information. Nevertheless, even after he suffers the loss of his children, his estate, and his health, Job himself is confident that he is sinless (10:7, NJB): “You [God] know very well that I am innocent”; (27:5–6): “I shall maintain my integrity to my dying day. I take my stand on my uprightness”; and (31:6): “Let him weigh me on accurate scales: then he, God, will recognize my integrity.” It sounds arrogant—but we know it is true. Job does not, though, claim certainty (9:2, 21): “How could anyone claim to be upright before God? . . . But am I innocent? I am no longer sure.” Job’s friends, however, see things differently. He is visited by three friends, ostensibly to (2:11) “offer him sympathy and consolation.” But the friends, rather than offering compassion, raise the questions of why Job is suffering, what he has done wrong, and what he can do about it. They are full of advice. Eliphaz asks (4:7): “Can you recall anyone guiltless that

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perished? Where then have the honest been wiped out?” He insists that no one is perfect, and Job should repent and learn from this lesson. Bildad insists (8:20): “God neither spurns anyone of integrity, nor lends his aid to the evil.” When Job will have none of that, his friends become more adamant. Zophar adds (11:4–6): “These were your words, ‘My conduct is pure, in your [God’s] eyes I am free of blame!’ Will no one let God speak, open his lips and give you an answer, show you the secrets of wisdom which put all cleverness to shame? Then you would realize that God is calling you to account for your sin.” And Eliphaz again (22:4–5): “Do you think he is punishing you for your piety and bringing you to justice for that? No, for your great wickedness, more likely, for your unlimited sins.” He goes on to conjecture a number of common sins. Finally (32:1): “These three men stopped arguing with Job, because he was convinced of his uprightness.” But, reminiscent of Thrasymachus, who (Republic 336b) “couldn’t keep quiet any longer. He coiled himself up like a wild beast about to spring, and he hurled himself at us as if to tear us to pieces,” a fourth person enters the discussion (Job 32:2–5): Elihu . . . became very angry. He fumed with rage against Job for thinking he was right and God was wrong, and he was equally angry with the three friends for giving up the argument and thus putting God in the wrong. While they and Job were talking, Elihu had waited, because they were older than he was; but when he saw that the three men had not another word to say in answer, his anger burst out.

Elihu insists that (34:11) “he [God] pays people back for what they do, treating each as his own conduct deserves.” And he continues (36:21): “Avoid any tendency to wrong-doing, for this is why affliction is testing you now.” None of Job’s friends can name any wrongdoing of his. Rather, their conception of life is that Job must have done something wrong. Job is suffering while God is just and all-powerful; therefore Job must be sinful. Though Job differs from his friends in maintaining his innocence, at this point he actually agrees with them in supposing that there must be some explanation for his suffering. The difference is that he is ready to blame God: Job is suffering while God is all-powerful and Job is innocent; therefore God must be unjust. So it is that Job seeks a trial—to put God on trial, as it were (13:22–23): “Then call me forward and I shall answer, or rather, I shall speak and you will answer. How many faults and crimes have I committed? Tell me what my misdeed has been, what my sin?” Although Job realizes (9:33) “there is no arbiter between us, to lay his hand on both,” he draws his own verdict (27:2): “I swear by the living God who denies me justice.”20 They all suppose that suffering can always be explained. There must be an answer to “why?” Carol Newsom writes, in a commentary on Job:

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That impulse remains intensely strong in many people. The words that echo in the mind of a person to whom a catastrophe has occurred are frequently “Why? Why did this happen?” Even those who do not want to claim that “sin” is always the cause of suffering nevertheless may be heard to say, “Everything happens for a reason.”21

Either Job’s guilt, or God’s injustice. Or, more commonly, God’s “mysterious ways”—mysterious in the sense that there is a rationale, only not one accessible to us. So far we have the following parallels to Wittgenstein’s seed case: There is the assertion in the description of the thought experiment that there are no differences. Then there is the more plausible description that as far as we can tell there are no differences. There is the omniscient assertion about Job that there is no sin. Then there is Job’s more plausible but fallible claim that he is innocent. In any case, no sins by him are ever revealed. We respond that there must be a difference between the seeds. Job’s friends insist that he must have sinned. Job insists that God must be unjust. Then, finally, God appears on the scene. It is not a very satisfying appearance—for Job and his friends, or for scholars. “Then from the heart of the whirlwind The Lord Yahweh gave Job his answer” (38:1). Essentially his response is a sublime display: Who are you to ask these questions? I’m in charge here! He asks Job a series of rhetorical questions, not meant to be answered.22 In sum: “Enough!” To which Job replies (40:4) “What can I say?” and continues (42:2, 6): “I know that you are all-powerful. . . . I retract what I have said.” Perhaps the best way to understand this is to see God as rejecting the search for explanation or justification. Bad things happen—get used to it. Stop trying to explain it; stop asking for a justification. This may leave open the possibility that there is some explanation—perhaps beyond us. But it makes clear that we have no business looking for it—we are to be content without it.23 Who are we to . . . ? Here, God’s sublime display of power is the erlösende word. Job’s response is ultimately silence (40:4–5): “I had better lay my hand over my mouth. I have spoken once, I shall not speak again.” And (42:3, 6): “You have told me about great works that I cannot understand. . . . I retract what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.” This certainly upsets our conceptions of justice and God. But if so, it is high time they were upset. Must there be a moral explanation here? Why don’t we just leave explaining alone? Today, if we actually discovered a case like Job’s, we would look frantically for an explanation; but in other circumstances we might give this up. God, by overawing Job and his friends, is trying to move them, and us, to those other circumstances.

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If we look at the story wholly from the human point of view of Job and his friends, the “moral” would be that the universe is amoral, even with God in it. This is not a conclusion that would sit easily with many people— suffering as a tragic fact of life. Newsom writes: What Job has been confronted with in the divine speeches will have rendered his old moral categories no longer adequate to his new perception. . . . They insist that the presence of the chaotic be acknowledged as part of the design of creation, but they never attempt to justify it. . . . When that happens, it is as though a spell is broken. Job is released from his obsession with justice and can begin the process of living beyond tragedy.24

An earlier commentator writes: Job is no longer asking “why?” . . . There is now for him a place where the problem is not solved, but it is beginning to dissolve. . . . It does not disturb him any longer at the point where it first disturbed him. He is willing to leave it.25

Whether this is something one can accept is a matter of temperament.26 But we still haven’t quite reached the end of the story. In an epilogue, God inexplicably turns to Eliphaz (42:7): “I burn with anger against you and your two friends for not having spoken correctly about me as my servant Job has done.” The sudden endorsement of Job leads scholars to suppose the God of the epilogue is a different voice from that in the whirlwind. Then (42:10–17) Job gets everything back, “double what he had before.” (To replace his seven sons and three daughters, he gets seven new sons and three new daughters. There is no attempt to explain how that works as consolation. We’ll leave that aside here, but will return to it presently.) This complicates the picture, since now it turns out that God seems just after all—rewarding innocent Job for his faithfulness. And, in fact, the reader has known all along that things were not what they seemed. So it is possible, in this fuller context, to read the story as an affirmation of all the old categories—an affirmation that there really is an explanation, only not one that is always accessible to us.27 To complete the comparison, then, the voice of God from the whirlwind in Job, though not the conception of God conveyed in the introduction or epilogue, occupies a position on the same trajectory that Wittgenstein travels.28 Ivan and Suffering Unlike the book of Job, with which he was merely familiar, Wittgenstein was certifiably obsessed with Dostoevsky’s great novel, The Brothers Karamazov.

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A friend of Wittgenstein’s from World War I reports: “In [March] 1916 Wittgenstein suddenly received orders to leave for the front. . . . He took with him only what was absolutely necessary. . . . Among a few other books he took with him The Brothers Karamazov. He liked this book very much.”29 In 1929 or 1930 Wittgenstein told Drury: “When I was a village schoolmaster in Austria after the war I read The Brothers Karamazov over and over again. I read it out loud to the village priest.”30 On August 5, 1949, Bouwsma reports: “this led him to talk of The Brothers. He must have read every sentence there fifty times.”31 In Book 5, Ivan Karamazov meets with his brother Alyosha, a novice at the local monastery and disciple of the Elder Zosima, to talk. In chapter IV, “Rebellion,” the rationalistic Ivan marshals several forceful examples of innocents—mostly children—suffering, and rejects God’s world in which such things can happen. “I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is.”32 Ivan rejects all possible justifications for such unmerited suffering: retribution, or counterbalancing goods, or some greater harmony. We could say that Ivan carries on the case of Job, only with stronger evidence. Job is in the inherently problematic situation of proclaiming his own innocence, but Ivan makes use of the unquestionable innocence of children who suffer. Ivan is driven by the need to understand, but he has no resources to do so. Dostoevsky made the strongest case he could for Ivan. In a letter, he wrote: “Everything my hero says . . . is based on reality. All the anecdotes about children took place, existed, were published in the press, and I can cite the places, I invented nothing.”33 Dostoevsky insisted: “My hero chooses a theme I consider irrefutable”—or, at any rate, irrefutable from Ivan’s rationalistic perspective. There is no rational answer here to the question “why?” Indeed, Pobedonostsev, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, wrote to Dostoevsky to find out what refutation was possible.34 (The novel was being published serially.) But Dostoevsky did have a carefully planned response: “will it be answer enough? The more so as it is not a direct point for point answer to the propositions previously expressed . . . but an oblique one. Something completely opposite to the world view expressed earlier [by Ivan] appears in this part, but again it appears not point by point but so to speak in artistic form.”35 Dostoevsky’s answer is Book 6 of the novel, “The Russian Monk.” Here we are told the life and teachings of Father Zosima. These are presented as a zhitie (a saint’s life, in Church Slavonic)—what we might call a hagiography. Dostoevsky’s strategy is to appeal to the reader’s emotions in a way that calms the urge to ask why.36 Three incidents from Zosima’s life before

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becoming a monk are related, in which, at crucial points, transformations take place that are not explained, but simply presented. Between the first and second story there is a retelling of the Job story that Zosima recalls from childhood.37 Much is left out of the retelling, but he focuses on the question of how getting new children could be any consolation to Job for the loss of his original children: “But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be?” No answer, but rather: “But he could, he could. It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.”38 Of course, this does not always happen. Some people are eaten up by old grief—it consumes them: “Why? Why me?” Such people are not wrong to ask these questions, but such questions are not obligatory or inevitable. Some people have the temperament to let them go.39 Ivan will be eaten up, if not ultimately destroyed, by his inability to let go of his questions. The appeal of traditional orthodox belief will not work with him. He would not understand where Zosima and Alyosha, and for that matter Dostoevsky, stand on these issues. The erlösende word does not work for everyone. In a letter to von Ficker, Wittgenstein himself uses the phrase in this more religious sense: “I understand your sad news all too well. You are living, as it were, in the dark, and have not found the erlösende word.”40 Ivan too lives, as it were, in the dark. The prescription Wittgenstein gave to von Ficker was to read Tolstoy’s Gospels in Brief.41 Readers of The Brothers Karamazov in English have little chance of experiencing Dostoevsky’s carefully crafted “reply” unaided. But it is possible to imagine parallel experiences that might resonate with English speakers— that might constitute the erlösende word for them. Dostoevsky uses Church Slavonic and other forms of speech reminiscent of religious experiences. One might think of favorite Bible passages rendered in the King James Version, such as the Twenty-Third Psalm, or favorite traditional hymns, such as “Jesus Loves Me,” or “Amazing Grace,” sung in church as a child. Even if the reader is not religious, what recollections from childhood can still bring tears to your eyes? The memory of Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas morning with now-gone relatives present. Looking through a box of treasures from your childhood. A lullaby your mother sang you. “There, there. . . .” Any experiences that can help you recapture a lost sense of innocence or reverence—these can be the erlösende word that Dostoevsky offers. Is this a fair “answer”? Should Job have backed down and accepted the new children, as he did? Should Ivan have taken on Alyosha’s temperament? Who can say?

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When Wittgenstein met with Russell after the war to explain the Tractatus to him, Russell wrote to Ottoline Morrell: “He has penetrated deep into mystical ways of thought and feeling, but I think (though he wouldn’t agree) that what he likes best in mysticism is its power to make him stop thinking.”42 In another context and much later, Wittgenstein wrote (August 14, 1946; C&V, 48/54): “only if I could be submerged in religion might these doubts be silenced.” In 1949, when he told Drury that “my type of thinking is not wanted in this present age,” Wittgenstein went on: “I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.”43 The trajectory of thought I am tracing here helps to give a plausible sense to this remark. Wittgenstein stands in the same trajectory of thought as Dostoevsky and his characters Alyosha and Father Zosima. The Mormons Drury reports that in 1929: “In the train on the way back to Cambridge we talked about Dickens. . . . Another book of Dickens that was a favourite of his was The Uncommercial Traveller”: Wittgenstein: This is a very rare thing—good journalism. The chapter [XXII] “Bound for the Great Salt Lake” was particularly interesting. Dickens had gone on board the emigrant ship prepared to condemn, but the happiness and good order he found on board made him change his mind. This showed what a real common religious movement could achieve. It was striking that when Dickens tried to draw them out as to what exactly it was they held in common, they became embarrassed and tried to avoid answering.44

Dickens describes the confusion of boarding the ship: But nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed. . . . Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June. And these people are so strikingly different from all other people in like circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, “What WOULD a stranger suppose these emigrants to be!”

In fact, the emigrants were Mormons, new adherents of a relatively new religion: I . . . had come aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-day Saints were like, and I found them (to the rout and overthrow of all my expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous exactness.

And Dickens concludes: I went on board their ship to bear testimony against them if they deserved it, as I fully believed they would; to my great astonishment they did not deserve it; and my

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predispositions and tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness. . . . [S]ome remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which better known influences have often missed.45

This provoked Wittgenstein to learn more about the Mormons. Though there is no indication that he ever met any Mormons in person, Wittgenstein did eventually read more about them. On November 28, 1944, he wrote to Rhees that he had been reading a history of the Mormons.46 Eduard Meyer’s The Origin and History of the Mormons, written in German, later translated into English, makes for a striking contrast to Frazer’s The Golden Bough. Frazer interpreted the religious ceremonies and beliefs of so-called primitive people as proto-scientific activity, which presupposed mistaken explanations about how the world operated. Wittgenstein took Frazer to task for his understanding, or rather, his failure of understanding. Basically Wittgenstein sees Frazer as attributing to these people an implicit concern to ask “why” certain things happen, and then to give mistaken answers: it is nonsense for one to go on to say that the characteristic feature of these actions is the fact that they arise from faulty views about the physics of things. (Frazer does this when he says that magic is essentially false physics or, as the case may be, false medicine, technology, etc.)47

This concern is Frazer’s own concern, but not theirs, or Wittgenstein’s: The very idea of wanting to explain a practice . . . seems wrong to me. All that Frazer does is to make them plausible to people who think as he does. It is very remarkable that in the final analysis all these practices are presented as, so to speak, pieces of stupidity.48

Students of Wittgenstein are generally well aware of these comments on Frazer. But in fact Wittgenstein took a wide-ranging interest in so-called primitive peoples and modern interpretations of them. For example, in addition to Frazer’s account of the practices of ancient peoples on the British Isles, Wittgenstein was also familiar with Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico, and he had a somewhat similar reaction. In 1934 Drury read aloud some of this to Wittgenstein: “During the reading he [Wittgenstein] would from time to time stop me and exclaim at Prescott’s condescending attitude towards those whom he referred to as ‘the aborigines of the American continent.’ Wittgenstein found this superior attitude very offensive.”49 And we know from his notebooks in 1930 (C&V, 5/7) that Wittgenstein read at least some of Renan’s History of the People of Israel in French. Renan’s condescension comes through in passages where he characterizes

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ancient Hebrew beliefs as a “tissue of deception,” “errors,” and “confusion of ideas.”50 He remarks on “the childish conceptions of men incapable of making a serious analysis of their ideas.”51 “The fundamental error of the savage . . . is spiritism, that is to say the stupidly realistic opinion which leads him to believe that in everything complex there is a spirit which forms its unity.” Renan in fact specifically contrasts Semitic or Hebrew ways of thinking with what he calls “Aryan,” and associates these differences with their languages: The Aryan Language was immensely superior [to the Semitic] especially in regard to the conjugation of verbs. This marvelous instrument, created by the instinct of primitive men, contained in the germ all the metaphysics which were afterwards to be developed through the Hindoo genius, the Greek genius, the German genius. . . . Philosophy and science, which are the capital creations of humanity, could not spring from this [Semitic] source.52

This is bound to have bothered Wittgenstein, who often saw metaphysics as more a problem than an achievement. And he certainly did not see philosophy as a capital creation of humanity. Renan continues: The difficulty of explaining in Hebrew the simplest philosophical notions in the Book of Job and Ecclesiastes is something quite astonishing. . . . The inroad of the scientific mind within the last century has made a great change in the relation of things. What was an advantage has become a drawback. The Semitic mind and intellect have appeared as hostile to the experimental science and to research into the mechanical causes of the world. . . . A quiver full of steel arrows, a cable with strong coils, a trumpet of brass, crashing through the air with two or three sharp notes, such is Hebrew. A language of this kind is not adapted to the expression of philosophic thought, or scientific result or doubt, or the sentiment of the infinite.53

In commenting on some of Renan’s ideas, Wittgenstein wrote (November 5, 1930; C&V, 5/7): “it is precisely the people of today & Renan himself who are primitive, if he believes that scientific explanation could enhance wonderment.” In fact, in the preface Renan calls his book a “Hebraic history.”54 It is no wonder that, given how Renan characterizes the Hebraic point of view, Wittgenstein could say to Drury in 1949: “my thoughts are one hundred percent Hebraic.”55 It is in contrast to the condescension of Frazer (and these other latenineteenth- and early-twentieth-century historical anthropologists) that Wittgenstein appreciated Meyer’s history of the Mormons. While Meyer says of Mormonism that “among revealed religions, it is one of the most unsophisticated and least intellectual,” he criticizes another writer, W. A. Linn, for being “unable to place himself in the position of the Mormons,

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and to penetrate their own way of thinking” and for “having passed judgment on them . . . from the standpoint of the typical American.”56 Wittgenstein must have appreciated just this willingness to try to step out of the modern temperament. Meyer’s account is “much closer to such a point of view than a rational or mechanistic philosophy of nature.”57 In sum, Meyer offers an honest account of the Mormons that takes them seriously. He clearly is not convinced, but neither is he condescending. This rather limited acquaintance with Mormonism still had an impact on Wittgenstein. On August 5, 1949, Wittgenstein talked with his friend Bouwsma about the Mormons: “They fascinated him. They are a fine illustration of what faith will do. Something in the heart takes hold. And yet to understand them! To understand a certain obtuseness is required. One must be obtuse to understand. He likened it to needing big shoes to cross a bridge with cracks in it. One mustn’t ask questions.”58 This could stand as a characterization of certain of Wittgenstein’s own thoughts. From our civilized point of view, a certain obtuseness is required; one mustn’t ask questions. Wittgenstein stands on the same trajectory as the Mormons, at least as he understood them. In sum, in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, the erlösende word is whatever will get one to stop asking questions when they threaten to go too far. It will vary from case to case, depending on who is asking the questions. Whether it will work depends on the temperament of the questioner— nothing is sure to work. Wittgenstein shows an affinity with certain figures in cultural-intellectual history—Euthyphro, the God from the whirlwind of Job, Dostoevsky and Father Zosima, the Mormons—because of their willingness to stop asking questions where they do. What state of mind are we to imagine for one who has found the erlösende word? In the case of Job, he says so little after the whirlwind (indeed, that’s the point) that we are in no position to characterize his state of mind. Is it a state of resignation or indifference?59 Certainly Ivan would balk at the suggestion that resignation or indifference is the proper response to the evils he marshals. And Alyosha would presumably not characterize it that way. However, consider what Wittgenstein says: As I have often said, philosophy does not lead me to any resignation, since I do not abstain from saying something, but rather abandon a certain combination of words as senseless. In another sense, however, philosophy requires a resignation, but one of feeling and not of intellect. And maybe that is what makes it so difficult for many. It can be difficult not to use an expression, just as it is difficult to hold back tears, or an outburst of anger//rage//.60

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Similarly, it can be difficult not to ask the question “why?” Here Wittgenstein distinguishes between a forced (“abstain”) and a voluntary (“abandon”) sense of resignation, and endorses the latter. Someone like Ivan could only see it as the former and would be unable to appreciate someone, like Alyosha, who experienced the latter. Wittgenstein calls this a resignation of feeling, rather than intellect. But, again, someone like Ivan would see it as a resignation of intellect. Indeed, Wittgenstein captures this sense in his discussion of the Mormons, when he attributes “obtuseness” to them (which sounds like an intellectual vice). Maybe we can express Wittgenstein’s point by saying that what he imagines is someone who sees the point of asking “why?” (and so it is not an intellectual resignation), but has no need to ask the question (so it is a resignation of feeling).61 Presumably we are to imagine something more like enlightenment (though one who lacks enlightenment will not see the resignation as enlightenment, which has an inherently positive connotation, but as obtuseness). In his 1929 Lecture on Ethics, Wittgenstein describes a state of mind somewhat similar to this, which he characterizes as having “absolute value”: It is, what one might call, the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the state of mind in which one is inclined to say “I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens.” . . . the experience of absolute safety has been described by saying that we feel safe in the hands of God.62

Wittgenstein acknowledges that this involves a misuse of language, but one that is characteristic of religious expressions. Perhaps Job has come to feel, in this sense, absolutely safe. Presumably Alyosha has come to feel that the world (including the innocent victims) is absolutely safe in the hands of God. Clearly this is not an intellectual achievement. If we feel very little affinity with this, Wittgenstein similarly is a distant figure from us.

11â•… Wittgenstein in the Twenty-First Century

Anthony Kenny published a highly successful book, Wittgenstein, in 1973. It was well reviewed, translated into seven languages, widely adopted as a course book, and remained in print for twenty-five years. Offered the opportunity to have it reprinted, Kenny added only a new introduction. He remarked that: The last thirty years, however, brought me disappointment, not about my own book but about the much more important matter of the reception of Wittgenstein himself. I had imagined that once his philosophical ideas had been absorbed, thinkers in various disciples would begin to apply them, with beneficial effect, to work in their own field. . . . [By 1984] I had to lament that the philosophical influence of Wittgenstein seemed to be diminishing rather than increasing. Some of Wittgenstein’s insights . . . I had believed, constituted irreversible advances in the subject. But now they were obscured or forgotten. Metaphysical weeds that his probing should have rooted up once and for all returned in ever more abundant strength.1

I quote Kenny here, now a Wittgenstein Trustee, not because his view is unusual among Wittgenstein scholars, but because it is so clearly and succinctly stated. Why is Wittgenstein’s influence waning? Kenny continues: It was due to changes in philosophical fashion in Europe and America. . . . in a scientistic climate the philosophical seeds he planted have a poor chance of flourishing. It is in the United States especially that a scientistic view of philosophy has prevailed.2

It surely is true that Wittgenstein had more influence in the 1950s and 1960s than he does now. That could be for various reasons. For one thing, Wittgenstein’s own students—Anscombe, Rhees, Malcolm—were actively promoting his ideas, which had been little propagated before his death. There was the mystery of the ideas, and the sense that these students had special insight into them because of their direct contact with Wittgenstein. As these original disciples—not a term Wittgenstein would have chosen or approved—aged, their influence and that of Wittgenstein’s

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ideas waned as well. If Wittgenstein’s ideas were like an impetus, their force weakened as they strayed from their source in time and space. Wittgenstein actually predicted something very like this (January 13, 1940; C&V, 38/43): A teacher who can show good, or indeed astounding results while he is teaching, is still not on that account a good teacher, for it may be that, while his pupils are under his immediate influence, he raises them to a level which is not natural to them, without developing their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again once the teacher leaves the schoolroom. Perhaps this holds for me; I have thought about this.

Perhaps the ideas did not take on a life of their own.3 Kenny attributes the waning to a change in the philosophical fashion or climate to a scientistic one. I think this is true; but it is not a change from the 1950s to the present, as Kenny seems to suppose, but a much more large-scale change from culture to civilization. Kenny assumes that Wittgenstein’s ideas were well understood and well received in the 1950s and 1960s, but I am unsure of the evidence for that. It is possible that they were popular but not really understood—even by their advocates. That is certainly what Wittgenstein thought. Kenny’s use of the seed metaphor is notable. It recalls Wittgenstein’s lament (previously quoted) closing his Easter term, 1939, lectures: “The seed I am most likely to sow is a certain jargon.” This suggests that he felt people would go through the motions of his philosophy, without it really sinking in. Here too, Kenny’s image of the “metaphysical weeds” is telling. Kenny thought they were “rooted up once and for all” without considering how this might have been accomplished. In the new introduction Kenny repeats some of the important points against the scientistic viewpoint, as though a clearer, more forceful statement might do the trick. But Wittgenstein’s ideas are up against much more than that. The surprise is that he realized as much, although his advocates don’t seem to have. Are Wittgenstein’s ideas a tool for undermining scientism? Or are they a message for a nonscientistic culture? Wittgenstein, as we have seen, had mixed feelings about this. But, in any case, they are far from being a tool that can be made effective simply by being stated clearly and forcefully. The image of a seed is reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the sower (Mark 4:3–8, KJV): Behold there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up,

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and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased, and brought forth, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred.

Kenny thinks the seed was sown into good soil originally, but the soil has changed. I think the seed was sown into the stony or thorny soil to start with—and so did Wittgenstein. The question of how to get the seed to flourish is the question of how to get it into some good soil. The real work—now, anyway—would not be sowing the seed (or, not only sowing the seed), but finding or, as we say, “cultivating” the good soil. (Or creating a hybrid seed.) Yet it is not clear how to do that. This is why Wittgenstein said things like (April 13–14, 1947; C&V, 61/70; previously quoted in chapter 6): A philosopher says “Look at things like this!”—but in the first place that doesn’t ensure that people will look at things like that, and in the second place his admonition may come altogether too late; it’s possible, moreover, that such an admonition can achieve nothing in any case and that the impetus for such a change in the ways things are perceived has to originate somewhere else entirely.

He continues: “I am by no means sure that I should prefer a continuation of my work by others to a change in the way people live which would make all these questions superfluous.” I suppose a continuation of his work would be more people sowing the seed—which is clearly what Kenny sees himself as doing. Wittgenstein does in fact envision such a scenario (C&V, 62/71; continuing from above), but: “Quite different artillery is needed here from anything I am in a position to muster. Most likely I could still achieve an effect in that, above all, a whole lot of garbage is written in response to my stimulus & that perhaps this provides the stimulus for something good. I ought always to hope only for the most indirect of influences.” Of course, then we would have to ask who is writing the “garbage.” Perhaps that was all the Wittgensteinian publications of the 1950s and 1960s. What, then, would be the “something good”? He might mean something good that is written, but this makes it sound like he thinks that someone might ultimately be able to change fashion or climate by talking about it—only, not him. That seems implausible, unless it be a writer along the lines of a Dostoyevsky, writing “in artistic form.” And that gives a point to Wittgenstein’s lament (1933–34; C&V, 24/28; quoted in chapter 2): “I believe I summed up where I stand in relation to philosophy when I said: really one should write philosophy only as one writes a poem [dichten]. That, it seems to me, must reveal how far my thinking belongs to the present, the future, or the past. For I was acknowledging myself, with these words, to be someone who cannot quite do what he would like to be able to do.”

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On the other hand, the something good might be something done, rather than something written or said. But it is altogether unclear what that could be. Still, that would seem to fit with Wittgenstein’s endorsement of Faust’s insistence that “In the beginning was the deed”—not the logos (word), as the Gospel of John has it.4 But until that “something good” comes along, we should expect, along with Wittgenstein, that there will continue to be a significant disconnect, which might best be expressed by saying that Wittgenstein will not be understood. This will apply to those aspects of his philosophy that are most directly an expression of his temperament, and in opposition to ours. That does not mean all aspects of his philosophy. There are certainly aspects of Wittgenstein’s ideas that have taken hold and continue to mold our thought. So let me close this work with a brief survey of some of Wittgenstein’s issues that we have addressed and of where things stand concerning them in contemporary discussion. I suggested in chapter 2 that Wittgenstein’s rejection of essentialism about definitions had been at least somewhat successful. It has been picked up by the cognitive scientists Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn Mervis, who undertook empirical investigations of categorization using the structuring of Wittgenstein’s family resemblances.5 This notion, as well as Wittgenstein’s criticisms (PI, §§69–70) of Frege’s requirement of exactness, can be seen as a starting point for contemporary investigations of vagueness and so-called fuzzy set theory.6 There still remains the question of whether there must be an exactness to the vagueness (so to speak), or whether we can rest content with a vague vagueness. Wittgenstein’s later insistence that phenomena must be understood in their context continues to be influential. In particular, when Wittgenstein, in the Philosophical Investigations, criticized the mentalistic or phenomenal account of understanding and meaning, he was making the point that meanings are not “in the head.” At PI §140 (and cf. §152) he says that “the same thing can come before our minds when we hear the word” and yet “the application still be different,” so it would not have the same meaning both times. By looking into our minds, God could not see of whom we were speaking (PI, Part II, 217/228; and cf. Z, §36). What one means depends on things that go on before and after the seeming moment of meaning. This is a temporally extended version of Putnam’s spatially “wide” construal of mental states.7 Wittgenstein even created twin-earth cases to make these points—imagined as time-slices put into different contexts (RFM, 336): Let us imagine a god creating a country instantaneously in the middle of the wilderness, which exists for two minutes and is an exact reproduction of a part of England,

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with everything that is going on there in two minutes. Just like those in England, the people are pursuing a variety of occupations. Children are in school. Some people are doing mathematics. Now let us contemplate the activity of some human being during these two minutes. One of these people is doing exactly what a mathematician in England is doing, who is just doing a calculation.—Ought we to say that this two-minute man is calculating? Could we for example not imagine a past and a continuation of these two minutes, which would make us call the processes something quite different?

Written in the early 1940s, this passage was not published until the “revised edition” of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, in 1978. But Wittgenstein articulated similar scenarios in the Philosophical Investigations, published in 1953 (§584): Now suppose that I sit in my room and hope that N. N. will come and bring me some money, and suppose one minute of this state could be isolated, cut out of its context; would what happened in it then not be hope?—Think, for example, of the words which you perhaps utter in this space of time. They are no longer part of this language. And in different surroundings the institution of money doesn’t exist either. A coronation is the picture of pomp and dignity. Cut one minute of this proceeding out of its surroundings: the crown is being placed on the head of the king in his coronation robes.—But in different surroundings gold is the cheapest of metals, its gleam is thought vulgar. There the fabric of the robe is cheap to produce. A crown is a parody of a respectable hat. And so on.

In the previous passage Wittgenstein asks: “Could someone have a feeling of ardent love or hope for the space of one second—no matter what preceded or followed this second?” And in Part II (174/183): “‘For a second he felt violent pain.’—Why does it sound odd to say: ‘For a second he felt deep grief’? Only because it so seldom happens?” Presumably not because it is so rare, but because deep grief, like the other phenomena he has been discussing, is inherently contextual. But he doesn’t hesitate over feeling violent pain for a second. Nor do we. This is the reason Wittgenstein’s opposition to the inverted spectrum has so much less influence. It is very easy to suppose that we have everything we need for understanding notions like “pain” or “red” just by the momentary experience of them. And it is those things themselves—pain or red—that lie behind the descriptions and justify them. Wittgenstein would like to push a similar contextualism for them, as in the private language argument, but that requires us to let go of the picture of some thing lying behind the expression. This is what leads Wittgenstein to the infamous declaration (PI, §304): “It is not a something, but not a nothing either!” On the other hand, no one is tempted to believe in a private language of

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propositional attitudes.8 There is much less temptation to insist that there is something lying behind the expression of propositional attitudes (to which only I have access). So Wittgenstein’s discussion of propositional attitudes has gotten much more attention in our times. In chapter 3 I did not go into much detail about Wittgenstein’s own account of understanding or other propositional attitudes. But instead of “reducing” understanding to some single sort of phenomenon in all circumstances—understanding as “nothing but” a feeling of confidence, a lightbulb going on in the head—he takes it to consist in various things in various circumstances: what I called “constitutivism.”9 This account is a natural model for more recent discussions of so-called nonreductive materialism, multiple realizability, token-identity, and the associated concept of supervenience. Some philosophers have thought that reduction was too much to hope for in an account of, say, mental phenomena, but still hoped for a material basis for the mental. Supervenience was seen as a less ambitious form of connection between the mental and the physical. As Quine put it: “No difference without a physical difference.”10 And the concept of supervenience has since been developed in considerable detail.11 We know, from the passages discussed in chapter 8, that Wittgenstein would be reluctant to endorse the Quinean slogan as stated. After all, couldn’t there be seeds that produced different plants (or brains that . . .), but that did not differ in any physical way?12 What this shows is that Wittgenstein is reluctant to accept what we might call presentist materialism— there is no difference present now in the seeds (or brains). He does allow that they differ—in their history, which is of course a physical difference, only not a present physical difference. The part of Wittgenstein’s view that leads Stich to worry about “mystical vitalism” is his refusal to endorse presentist materialism.13 But apart from concerns about what the constituents must be—whether material, or present—constitutivism itself, as a precursor to supervenience, seems to offer an interesting alternative to reductivism.14 Yet, ironically, this alternative has been called into question by one of its own pioneers. Jaegwon Kim, in his 1989 Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association, “The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism,” has taken the view that “a middle-of-the-road position of the sort just described is not available. More specifically. . . a physicalist has only two genuine options, eliminativism and reductionism.”15 Kim’s view is motivated primarily by considerations having to do with causation. Either the mental is causally superfluous—in which case it may as well be eliminated, or else it is causally efficacious—in which case it must

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be reducible to the physical after all. If the mental is not superfluous, then, Kim says: if the physical cause hadn’t occurred, the mental cause by itself would have caused the effect. This picture is . . . absurd: from what we know about the physiology of limb movement, we must believe that if the pain sensation causes my hand to withdraw, the causal chain from the pain to the limb motion must somehow make use of the causal chain from an appropriate central neural event to the muscle contraction; it makes no sense to think that there might be an independent, perhaps telekinetic, causal path from the pain to the limb movement.16

Where Kim says “we must believe . . .” and “the limb motion must somehow make use of . . .” and “it makes no sense to think . . .” we can detect the kinds of sensibilities and temptations that Wittgenstein wished to resist. “If this upsets our concepts of causality, then it is high time they were upset.” It is important to recall that Wittgenstein does not wish to invoke telekinesis; he wishes to reduce our expectations of causality. Kim supposes there must be a mechanism mediating causal chains, so if it is not physical, then it is some spooky mechanism. Wittgenstein wishes to resist the insistence on mediating mechanisms. But to name Kim’s sensibilities and temptations is not to delegitimize them. Indeed, they are probably widely attractive. But people like Kim seem to forget that we have no mediating mechanisms for gravity and quantum mechanics, yet we don’t invoke telekinesis.17 Wittgenstein’s point is to not need to invoke something in any of these cases.18 The question of when to stop the search for an explanation or justification may really seem unfashionable. But it has relevance to some contemporary psychological work. One is recent work on explaining our own mental processes gathered and advanced in the classic paper by Nisbett and Wilson. Basically, they make the case that we are very bad at knowing why we act as we do. Many studies have shown that we give demonstrably wrong answers when pressed to explain ourselves. Perhaps the most striking case is when subjects were asked to explain why they had chosen certain nylon stockings rather than others, which were in fact exactly the same. The difference was that those stockings presented on the right were regularly preferred over those on the left. But subjects insisted that they chose based on characteristics of the stockings, and even maintained this once the preference of right over left was pointed out to them.19 There are perhaps many different morals that could be drawn from studies such as these—mostly having to do with our lack of self-awareness. But the relevant moral, for our purposes, has to do with the process of asking

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for explanations. We have a strong tendency to want to justify ourselves.20 When we have no justification at hand, we will make one up—and yet not be conscious that we have done so. This can be harmless, as when one holds forth on the virtues of stockings, but it can be harmful if, say, one attributes one’s depression to one’s children’s behavior, rather than to the imbalance of chemicals in the brain. Sometimes the urge to explain or justify is better suppressed, or at any rate not lightly provoked. The question of when to press, or halt, the process of explanation or justification comes up in a variety of contemporary philosophical discussions. Thomas Nagel has an interesting discussion of this issue as it relates to the meaning or absurdity of life. The ability to step back from our life and press for a justification of our activities is one of the things that make us most human.21 This is indeed what Socrates seems to have had in mind when he said (Apology 38a): “the unexamined life is not worth living for men.” Yet absurdity results from this “perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary” from a larger perspective. Nagel thinks that this “collision within ourselves” is best faced with a sense of irony. The only way to avoid this sort of collision of self-consciousness “would be either never to attain it or to forget it—neither of which can be achieved by the will.”22 Here we find Wittgenstein at odds with Socrates once again. The Socratic dialogues often end inconclusively because those Socrates is talking with run out of patience.23 Socrates doesn’t know when enough is enough, as we say. “The difficulty here,” Wittgenstein says (Z, §314), “is: to stop.” Although the unexamined life may not be worth living, the endlessly examined life, on the other hand, is not livable. Nagel says that once the issue is raised, we cannot “forget it” through an act of will. But what one can do is willingly submit oneself to a process that might predictably lead one to forget it, or care less about it. This is essentially what Dostoyevsky hopes one will do by reading Book 6 of his novel. But doing so requires the “quite different artillery” that Wittgenstein is unsure how to marshal. David Lewis has given a structure to certain philosophical debates in an important paper, “Scorekeeping in a Language Game.” He considers pragmatic “rules of accommodation” in conversations, in which certain presuppositions or standards ordinarily (“provided that nobody objects”) become appropriate if they are required to make assertions be true. Thus, standards of flatness, say, may evolve in a conversation according to the assertions being made. Lewis supposes that standards can go either way—rising or falling—as needed, but notes that there is actually an “asymmetry.”24 Higher standards seem to have a sticky claim to legitimacy. Philosophy professors

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exploit this tendency all the time in teaching Descartes—asking whether we “really” know such and such. Once the standard of absolute certainty has been introduced into the debate, it is considered naive to resist it. Bernard Williams calls this “the irreversibility of Enlightenment”: “once the question has been raised, there is no respectable route back from confronting it.”25 In some contexts, Wittgenstein would have us wonder whether there automatically is a language game appropriate for just any set of standards. Once one steps beyond the ordinary language games of “knowing,” one is left in midair, or in a merely philosophical language game—which we diagnosed earlier. However, in cases like Job’s questions to God, or Ivan’s questions to Alyosha, it seems implausible to claim they have moved outside of an intelligible language game. The question why the innocent suffer is not unintelligible. They are not asking something unintelligible, but rather their need to ask it is unfortunate. “It is important in philosophy to know when to stop—when not to ask a question.”26 This is a substantive, not a conceptual, stopping point. Best is never to have asked. What to do when that point is exceeded? Can an asked question be unasked? Can lost innocence be reclaimed? Lewis is right that it is harder to go back, but he sees “no reason to respect this” tendency.27 Our earlier discussion confirms both of these thoughts: Ivan is a person who cannot go back. Lacking a real family-upbringing, and lacking a connection to the church, he is driven on only by reason. Job and perhaps Dostoyevsky’s readers may have resources that allow them to go back, so that the overwhelming presence of God, or the long-remembered practices of the Orthodox Church, can in a sense erase the questions. Whether one has, or can avail oneself of, these resources is a matter of temperament. The erlösende word does not work for everyone. But returning from these sublime cases to the more ordinary ones of seeds and brains—the awkwardness of Wittgenstein’s position is well captured by Lewis’s account. The scientifically minded person presses for a mediative mechanism. The rule of accommodation thus creates the presumption, provided that nobody objects, that there should be such mechanisms. Wittgenstein objects, but the question has been asked, and there are no obvious resources for erasing it. Wittgenstein can remind us that in some language games—like gardening—there is no need for mechanisms. But we are free to choose another language game—say, auto mechanics— that provides for a search for mechanisms. What we choose is a matter of temperament—what we want from our language games.

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The possibility of eliminative materialism continues to be debated. I raised this in the discussion of whether science can solve philosophical issues. Wittgenstein’s insulation thesis has generally been taken as inconsistent with eliminativism. But I have argued, in chapter 7, that what Wittgenstein holds is that scientific discoveries cannot immediately and of themselves solve philosophical problems. That is consistent with science having other conceptual effects in the longer term. This is a point that readers of Wittgenstein do not generally see. And it opens Wittgenstein up to the possibility after all. It is not a possibility that he sees as likely, but the important point is that he holds no principled opposition to the possibility. Rather, it is more a sociological matter of what role we give to science in our society, and of how scientific and ordinary vocabularies evolve in relation to one another. In particular, this raises questions about the process of what Putnam has called the “division of linguistic labor.”28 Putnam has little to say about this beyond asserting its existence. Reflection on Wittgenstein’s views opens the way for further understanding of that process. Although Wittgenstein has no principled opposition to eliminativism, he does have interesting things to say about the normative question as to what role we should grant to science. This is a debate of enormous importance for this century—the more so because it is not always realized that it is something to be debated at all. And although Wittgenstein’s unfashionable view about this may well hold little sway, its existence at least maintains the possibility for debate. This, however, makes Wittgenstein sound like an advocate of reasoned discourse between opposing points of view—which he often is not. This was an implication of our discussion in chapter 5. In general, Wittgenstein has less to say than we might like about the relationships between peoples and points of view that do not easily coexist. He has useful tools for characterizing groups and points of view—language games, worldviews, and forms of life. But he seems more interested in the differences, and the isolation this can lead to, than in the means of finding common ground or facilitating coexistence. This is unfortunate, since there could hardly be a greater need in the present century. I do not think there is anything in Wittgenstein’s ideas that obstructs the search for common ground. Rather, my suggestion is that something in his temperament was obstructive—his own deep difficulties of engaging with people. No doubt exiles have difficulty engaging with those around them. But that does not mean that those around them have to suffer from these same difficulties. Perhaps Wittgenstein helps us to properly appreci-

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ate the differences there are between people and to not underestimate the difficulties. But in this century we hardly need reminding of that. Wittgenstein died on April 29, 1951. He had suffered from cancer for a few years, finally taking hormone and X-ray treatments. But he gave these up in February, and Dr. Bevan and his wife invited him to stay with them in Cambridge during his final months. In 1925, while visiting England and staying with John Maynard Keynes, Wittgenstein had concluded a letter to his friend Engelmann: “I wish now I could die in a moment of brilliance.”29 This wish more or less came true as, once he stopped his medical treatments, Wittgenstein regained the ability to work on philosophy that he had lacked for some time.30 During the last seven weeks of his life, from March 10 to April 27, he wrote more than half of the remarks (§§300–676) collected as On Certainty. Yet his deteriorating condition also left him hoping for a rapid end to his life. As things worsened on April 28, he was informed that his friends would be coming the next day. His last words, said to Mrs. Bevan (in English) before losing consciousness, were: “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life!”31 Is this an accurate statement about Wittgenstein’s life? Did he mean to say something true? Or something consoling for his friends? What did he mean by “wonderful”? How can we understand this? Can we understand it at all? Mrs. Bevan apparently offered no interpretation. Derek Jarman’s film, Wittgenstein, surprisingly does not include this scene, but an anonymous reviewer of the film, on a gay film Web site, commented that “Wittgenstein struggled with self-alienation throughout his life. He died of cancer in 1951. His final, mocking words were: ‘Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.’” If Jarman had included this scene, the words could well have been said caustically. The paragraph in which Ray Monk quotes Wittgenstein’s words certainly supports the caustic interpretation, surrounding them, as Monk does, with a foul mood and other caustic remarks.32 Yet Monk does not present them as an expression of a lifelong alienation. And, in any case, alienation seems to be a surer theme of Wittgenstein’s life than is self-alienation. Obviously Wittgenstein’s friends would not want to be bidden farewell in that way. Norman Malcolm, one of those friends, who, however, was not in England at the time, first published these words in his Memoir in 1958. He found them to be a mystery: When I think of his profound pessimism, the intensity of his mental and moral suffering, the relentless way in which he drove his intellect, his need for love together with the harshness that repelled love, I am inclined to believe that his life was

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fiercely unhappy. Yet at the end he himself exclaimed that it had been “wonderful”! To me this seems a mysterious and strangely moving utterance.

Then in a revised edition in 1984 he decided that, though Wittgenstein’s life seemed unhappy, his work and friendships must have been “a source of richness in his life.”33 In 1958 Malcolm interpreted “wonderful” as synonymous with “enjoyable.” By 1984 he saw it as synonymous with “worthwhile.” Perhaps the best model for Wittgenstein’s sense of the word is Frank Capra’s 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life. Indeed, it is hard to imagine Wittgenstein, a great fan of popular American films, making this statement without being aware of its similarity to the title of this film. It is interesting how this phrase, though said by Wittgenstein, can be a mirror of its interpreters. Perhaps some wish to see Wittgenstein as a companion in misery, as the film review might suggest. Personal friends might wish to see something redemptive in Wittgenstein’s struggles. Biographers might wish to see something unifying in the death-bed pronouncement. Peter John has proposed to interpret “wonderful” literally as “full of wonder.”34 Though this stretches its colloquial use in English, Webster’s second edition (1934) does offer “adapted to excite wonder.” And Boswell, in his Life of Johnson (which Wittgenstein had read in 1948), regularly uses “wonderful” to mean “to be wondered at.”35 It is clear that the capacity to wonder, and remain in wonder, was important for Wittgenstein. In 1929, in “A Lecture on Ethics,” he offered “wonder at the existence of the world” as an illustration of what had intrinsic value for him.36 And a year later, Wittgenstein worried that this capacity for wonder was greatly endangered by modern conceptions of science and progress (C&V, 5/7, quoted previously): “Man has to awaken to wonder [Zum Staunen]—and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”37 Fundamentally, Wittgenstein strove to have a life full of wonder, and this construal of his remark would, in a sense, crown that life. On this interpretation his dying remark crystallized his life as he sought to live it. It is not surprising that we would have trouble seeing the remark in this way, but as something expressive of our own ideals. Wittgenstein’s relevance for philosophy in the twenty-first century is very much in question. It may well depend on our temperament, for (1950; C&V, 85/96) “in order to enjoy a poet [Dichter], you have to like the culture to which he belongs as well. If you are indifferent to this, or repelled by it, your admiration cools off/only a cold admiration is possible.”

Notes

Introduction 1.╇ Wittgenstein’s dream and accompanying remarks are published in the original German in Wiener Ausgabe v. 2, 90. The dream and some of the surrounding remarks are translated by Ray Monk (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 276). Wittgenstein’s tendency to use reverse-alphabet code for some of his writing may have begun in childhood, but was put to systematic use in World War I when Wittgenstein kept notebooks that contained his philosophical reflections in plain alphabet on right-hand pages (published as Notebooks: 1914–1916) and his more personal reflections in code on lefthand pages (published as Geheime Tagebücher, and not yet translated into English). Upon his return to Cambridge he continued to use code to set off remarks not directly germane to his philosophical line of thought, but he was, as we see here, by no means consistent in this usage. His simple code seems to have been designed to keep his writing secret from casual onlookers, but it is far from the more idiosyncratic code used by Charles Wesley in his diaries from 1736 to 1756, and only penetrated centuries later (see Jenkins, “Methodism”). 2.╇ Letter of January 18, 1929 from Keynes to Lydia Lopokova (Monk, Wittgenstein, 255). 3.╇ That Wittgenstein thought he had, with the Tractatus, said everything that needed saying about philosophical issues is clear from its preface: “I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems.” Yet when Keynes and Ramsey were engaged in the task of trying to bring Wittgenstein back to Cambridge in 1924, Wittgenstein’s excuse was a bit different: “No: there’s nothing that can be done in that way, because I myself no longer have any strong inner drive towards that sort of activity. Everything that I really had to say, I have said, and so the spring has run dry” (July 4, 1924; CL, 205–207). Wittgenstein’s reasons for becoming a school teacher are set out in Monk, Wittgenstein, 192–193. 4.╇ Apparently the first impact that the Tractatus had in Vienna was a seminar given in 1922 by the mathematician Hans Hahn, attended by Moritz Schlick and Kurt Reidemeister (McGuinness, “Editor’s Preface,” 13; and Stadler, The Vienna Circle,

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423). This led Schlick, who was a central figure in the Vienna Circle, to search out Wittgenstein. While Wittgenstein met with various members of the Vienna Circle irregularly starting in 1927, it was a Circle-sponsored talk, on March 10, 1928, by the mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer, “Science, Mathematics, and Language,” that apparently galvanized Wittgenstein’s interest in philosophy (Feigl, “The ‘Wiener Kreis’ in America,” 639; see also Menger, “Wittgenstein, Brouwer, and the Circle,” 178). The first public reaction to the Tractatus in the English-speaking world was an unsigned review, written by Herbert Wildon Carr, in the Times Literary Supplement, December 21, 1922. This was followed shortly by Richard Braithwaite’s talk to the Cambridge Moral Science Club entitled “Wittgenstein’s Logic,” given on January 26, 1923. A year later (March 29, 1924) Keynes could report to Wittgenstein that the Tractatus (CL, 201) “dominates all fundamental discussions at Cambridge since it was written.” 5.╇ Ramsey was also mainly responsible for the English translation, in 1922, of the Tractatus. Ramsey’s visits to Wittgenstein in rural Austria, in 1923–1924, can be traced from his correspondence (“Letters by F. P. Ramsey”). Upon returning to Cambridge in 1929 Wittgenstein began to meet with Ramsey almost immediately and quite regularly, and while Wittgenstein had varying feelings about Ramsey and his discussions with him, Wittgenstein wrote, in his January, 1945, preface to the Philosophical Investigations, “I was helped to realize these mistakes” in the Tractatus “—to a degree which I am hardly able to estimate—by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life.” Wittgenstein should have written only “the last year,” as in fact Ramsey died unexpectedly on January 19, 1930. 6.╇ On October 16, 1929, just ten days after the dream in question, the University Faculty Board of Moral Sciences at Cambridge University invited Wittgenstein to give lectures beginning in the Lent (winter) term of 1930. In fact his first lecture was given just the day after Ramsey died suddenly. His last lectures at Cambridge were given Easter (spring) term of 1947. What we know of Wittgenstein’s lectures is compiled in Klagge, “The Wittgenstein Lectures.” Wittgenstein’s writings, known as his Nachlaß, are massive—amounting to some 20,000 pages. They have been made available in toto on CD-ROM (Wittgenstein’s Nachlaß, 2000). About two dozen volumes have been published in book form. More than once Wittgenstein was on the verge of publishing a later book, but he always changed his mind. 7.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 9: “I resigned my position at Cambridge for two reasons. First I wanted to finish my book.” And also: August 27, 1947, letter in “Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Georg Henrick von Wright,” 464. 8.╇ In his will he wrote (Nedo, Wiener Ausgabe, Introduction, 52): “I intend and desire that Mr. Rhees, Miss Anscombe, and Professor von Wright shall publish as many of my unpublished writings as they think fit. . . .”

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9.╇ Lackey, “What Are the Modern Classics?” 331–332. Responses from 414 teachers of philosophy (a response rate of over 10 percent). More recently, polls conducted by Brian Leiter on his Leiter Reports blog in spring 2009, presumably attracting primarily professional philosophers, show Wittgenstein to be the “greatest philosopher of the 20th-century” (getting 27 percent of the 2,066 votes, with Russell coming in second with 14 percent), and the “most important philosopher of the last 200 years” (among 600 voters, beating out secondplace Frege by 261–160). Among the (intellectual) public, Wittgenstein’s influence and importance are also secure. At the close of the last century, Time magazine released a special issue (March 29, 1999) on “The Century’s Greatest Minds,” the fourth of its five-part series on the 100 most influential people of the century. Wittgenstein was the only philosopher chosen among the two dozen greatest scientists and thinkers, unless one counts Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing—both primarily mathematical logicians. See Dennett, “Ludwig Wittgenstein,” 88–90.

1â•… No One Understands Me 1.╇ Kolak’s translation is 50 pages, Ogden and Ramsey’s 81 pages, Pears and McGuinness’s 90 pages (all counts including Wittgenstein’s preface but omitting Russell’s introduction). The original German printing was 67 pages. 2.╇ In a letter to a prospective publisher, Wittgenstein wrote (“Letters to Ludwig von Ficker,” 97): “(By the way, the decimals will have to be printed along with the sentences because they alone give the book lucidity and clarity and it would be an incomprehensible jumble without this numeration.)” 3.╇ Ibid., 93. 4.╇ Ibid., 94. Yet Wittgenstein does proceed to give some advice, which I quote later in chapter 10. 5.╇ Ibid., 95. Matthew 7:6: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” 6.╇ Letters to C. K. Ogden, 46. Ogden did not take his advice, as he left only two blank sheets in the back of the book. 7.╇ May 28, 1912, letter from Russell to Lady Ottoline Morrell, in McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 104. 8.╇ June 28, 1919, letter from Frege to Wittgenstein, in “Frege’s Letters.” On August 1, 1919, Wittgenstein wrote to his sister, Hermine (Gesamtbriefwechsel): “I had always thought that he [Frege] would not understand my work at all. Nevertheless I was somewhat depressed about what he wrote.”

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9.╇ Despite Wittgenstein’s misgivings, he tried very hard to explain the Tractatus to Russell in their face-to-face meetings in 1919, so that, against all hope, someone might understand the book. As Russell recounts their meetings (December 12, 1919; letter to Colette O’Niel, from the Hague, in McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 290): [Wittgenstein] is so full of logic that I can hardly get him to talk about anything personal. . . . He came before I was up, and hammered at my door until I woke. Since then he has talked logic for 4 hours.

And (December 20, 1919, letter to Ottoline Morrell, from the Hague, CL, 140): I leave here today, after a fortnight’s stay, during a week of which Wittgenstein was here, and we discussed his book every day. I came to think even better of it than I had done; I feel sure it is a really great book, though I do not feel sure it is right.

Clearly Wittgenstein was intent on giving the “very thorough explanation” that he had mentioned to Keynes. Reflecting on their time together Wittgenstein wrote to Russell (January 8, 1920; CL, 146): “I enjoyed our time together very much and I have the feeling (haven’t you too?) that we did a great deal of real work during this week.” Real work discussing the book’s contents line by line. Consider also Engelmann’s report (Graßhoff, “From a Lonely Mass-Particle,” 8) about his time with Wittgenstein in Olmütz in 1916: “his repeated lectures, lasting several hours, on the topics of the then still unprinted [indeed, unfinished] Tractatus were to me, of course, an inestimable introduction.” And Ramsey’s report to Ogden on his two week visit in 1923: “L. W. explains his book to me from 2–7 every day” (Letters to C. K. Ogden, 79). That all of this effort on Wittgenstein’s part to explain the Tractatus might, as some have suggested, have been intended to get others to see that the whole project was nonsense from the start, is belied by Wittgenstein’s response concerning a proposed title for his book (letter to Ogden dated April 23, 1922; in Letters to C. K. Ogden, 20): “As for the title I think the latin one is better than the present title. . . . ‘Philosophic Logic’ is wrong. In fact I don’t know what it means! There is no such thing as philosophic logic. (Unless one says that as the whole book is nonsense the title might as well be nonsense too.)” Since he did not want a nonsense title, it follows that he did not consider the book itself to be nonsense. 10.╇ Letters to Russell on April 9 and May 6, 1920, in CL, 152–154; and letter to Engelmann, May 8, 1920, in Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 30–31. Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine held out a similar hope (Gesamtbriefwechsel, letter of October 19, 1920): “I have read through your essay twice & the preface by Russell. I had to laugh at myself because I knew from the beginning that I could not understand it and yet I could not stop. . . .I must talk with you about it some time!” 11.╇ Though Wittgenstein did answer queries on the English translation. See Letters to C. K. Ogden. 12.╇ Wood, Bertrand Russell, 156.

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13.╇ In the following two propositions—6.374 and 6.375—Wittgenstein goes on to remind us that there is no logical connection between the will and the world. If that is all he meant by the assertion at 6.373, then it is not so surprising or implausible. But the oddity is that few would have ever supposed that there was any such logical connection. It is the causal connection that both matters and is in question in his own circumstances. It is the lack of an effective causal connection that he must here accept and come to terms with. The fact that Wittgenstein is not only interested in a purely logical connection is evidenced by his acknowledgment, at 5.631, that there are things in the world— parts of his body—that are subordinate to [unterstehen], or that obey, his will (as well as parts that are not). And this is surely no logical connection. 14.╇ Anscombe, An Introduction, 11, and von Wright, “Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Biographical Sketch,” 18. Wittgenstein makes no mention of Schopenhauer in the Tractatus. In the preface he explains that “it is a matter of indifference to me whether the thoughts that I have had have been anticipated by someone else.” But the reader, concerned not with originality but with accessibility, would have benefited from such references. 15.╇ Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, 204–205. 16.╇ Ibid., vol. 2, 156–157. 17.╇ Though there is no direct evidence that Wittgenstein had Schopenhauer’s book with him in 1916, Glock claims that (“Wittgenstein and Reason,” 423) “It is probable that Wittgenstein reread Schopenhauer sometime during the war, presumably as a result of his experiences as a front-line soldier.” The quoted passages suggest why Wittgenstein might have (re)turned to Schopenhauer in consequence of his experiences. Wittgenstein mentions Schopenhauer in his philosophical notebooks on August 2, 1916 (NB, 79). 18.╇ Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, vol. 2, 158. 19.╇ Wittgenstein’s sister noted the nickname (Hermine Wittgenstein, “My Brother,” 3). The letter to von Ficker was July 24, 1915 (“Letters to Ludwig von Ficker,” 91). On September 2, 1914, Wittgenstein remarks (GT, 20) that the previous day he had begun reading Tolstoy’s Gospels in Brief. His reading continued over the week, and within a month he was carrying it around with him as a “talisman.” Bertrand Russell wrote to Lady Ottoline (December 20, 1919; CL, 140): “during the war a curious thing happened. He went on duty to the town of Turnov in Galicia, and happened to come upon a bookshop which however seemed to contain nothing but picture postcards. However, he went inside and found that it contained just one book: Tolstoy on The Gospels. He bought it merely because there was no other. He read it and re-read it, and thenceforth had it always with him, under fire and at all times.” In preparation for danger (September 12, 1914; GT, 21) Wittgenstein wrote:

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“I say Tolstoy’s words over and over again in my head: ‘Man is powerless in the flesh but free because of the spirit.’ [Epigram, 36] May the spirit be in me!” 20.╇ Tolstoy, Gospel in Brief, 155–156. 21.╇ McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 242. 22.╇ August 4, 1922; Letters to C. K. Ogden, 57–58. 23.╇ The importance of understanding the biographical background of the Tractatus can be compared with the importance of understanding the biographical background of Plato’s Republic. Plato’s extreme emphasis on the internal and external security of the state makes sense really only against a background like that of Athens’ experiences during and after the Peloponnesian War. (And compare the willingness of neo-conservatives in the United States to sacrifice civil liberties—for the sake of battling terrorism after 9/11.) What values a social theorist emphasizes depend on what circumstances most deeply impress themselves on the theorist. And what selfcoaching a person does depends on that person’s most pressing circumstances. Without knowledge of the specific circumstances from which they arose, it is easy to suppose that these propositions in the Tractatus are meant to be intelligible regardless of the circumstances. But, to draw on Wittgenstein’s later thoughts (PI, §140), it seems that “only the one case and no other occurred to” Wittgenstein as he was finishing the Tractatus. Those extreme circumstances seemed to him revealing of the nature of life itself. But it seems he was suffering from “a one-sided diet” of examples (PI, §593). (Ironically, when Wittgenstein first formulated this last proposition—in MS 120, March 29, 1938—he followed it with the parenthetical: “(e.g. Plato).”) McGuinness goes so far as to say (“In the Shadow of Goethe,” 448): “no one else could have written his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Above all, no one who had not been through that War could have written it.” 24.╇ Quoted by Engelmann in his introduction to, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, xiv. 25.╇ Rhees, “Review of W. W. Bartley,” 74–76. 26.╇ Rhees’s tunnel vision here may partly be explained by the fact that he knew Wittgenstein only later in life—beginning in Michaelmas term of 1935, well after Wittgenstein had moved beyond the Tractatus. For it was in the Tractatus that his Central European culture and his wartime experiences loomed the largest. But also, Wittgenstein’s predominantly Anglo-American students tended to be less interested in and less aware of his very different background. It was the third friend, student, and literary executor—G. H. von Wright—who did the most to facilitate the understanding of Wittgenstein’s life and background. Von Wright was Swedish-Finnish, and a cultured European. Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, who wrote the seminal book on the background to the Tractatus, credit the encouragement they received from von Wright, who told them “that the two

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most important facts to remember about Wittgenstein were, firstly, that he was a Viennese and, secondly, that he was an engineer with a thorough knowledge of physics” (Wittgenstein’s Vienna, 28–29). The present book is mainly devoted to understanding the biographical background to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, but the importance and legitimacy of the enterprise was first established for the now-clearer case of the earlier philosophy. The potential relevance of biography for understanding a philosopher’s work has been gaining momentum (Postel, “The Life and the Mind”), but in each case it needs to be established through particular connections that lead to particular insights, rather than through general claims. This is what I have tried to do by tracing a path from Wittgenstein’s wartime experiences as recorded in his coded remarks, through the more philosophical remarks of the Notebooks, to the Tractatus. 27.╇ Engelmann, in his memoir, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 94. 28.╇ A survey of journal publications in the 1930s shows how often writers made the obligatory citation of the Tractatus but hesitated to expound its views. A few explained: “Because of the difficulty I find in construing Mr. Wittgenstein’s cryptic utterances, I hesitate to refer to him.” (Swabey, “Logic as Language Habits,” 127n); and “As I am unsure of the meaning of the passage cited from Dr. Wittgenstein, I will leave his views out of consideration” (Sholl, “Variables Again,” 58); and “However I do not pretend to understand Mr. Wittgenstein very well and I find his discussion of structure especially difficult” (Wohlstetter, “The Structure of the Proposition,” 173), which led this man to add, in a footnote: “No one has called Mr. Wittgenstein the Mystery Man of Modern Philosophy. I have no explanation to offer of this.” A masterful piece of discretion! An unsigned abstract of the Tractatus, part of a bibliography in the inaugural issue of Erkenntnis in 1930, concluded simply (Waismann, “Bibliographie,” 334): “The treatise is difficult to understand [schwer verständlich],” and looked forward to the “popular presentation of the general ideas [leichtfaßliche Darstellung der Hauptgedanken]” forthcoming from Waismann. (It was probably Waismann who wrote this abstract.) This anticipates Waismann, Logik, Sprache, Philosophie, which only finally appeared in 1976 (and in translation as Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, 1965). 29.╇ Gesamtbriefwechsel, Wittgenstein to Koder, November 1929. 30.╇ “Letters to the Editor of Mind,” 157. Richard Braithwaite had attended some of Wittgenstein’s lectures in 1931–1932. 31.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, 293. At around the same time (February 2, 1939), Wittgenstein wrote to Moore concerning Keynes’s request to see a translation of his book (CL, 305): “I needn’t say the whole thing is absurd as he couldn’t even make head or tail of it if it were translated very well.” 32.╇ Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations,” 78. 33.╇ Wittgenstein in Cambridge, 279.

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34.╇ Wittgenstein’s idea, in 1938, of publishing his new work was not sheer fantasy. On the last page and then onto the inside of the back cover of a pocket notebook (MS 160, 1938) he drafted and obsessively redrafted the following sentence (in English): My intention is[?] that some day all this should be one book. to make a book (out) of the someday to make My intention is[?] a book out of all this these thoughts to make a book out of them all to make out of all of them a book

(Where I have “is[?]” the Bergen edition has “was.” The handwriting is hard to read—but it makes more sense to redraft a statement of your future intent. And if the first line had began: “My intention was. . . ” then it should have ended: “. . . that some day all this would be one book” or “. . . should have been one book.”) Wittgenstein submitted a work entitled Philosophische Bemerkungen to Cambridge University Press, and the press, on September 30, agreed to publish it in German and English. But uncertainties on Wittgenstein’s part led to the project being shelved on October 21. We can only conjecture as to their nature. Again in 1943 Wittgenstein approached the press about publishing a volume, this time to contain the Tractatus and a work entitled Philosophische Untersuchungen. Cambridge University Press agreed on January 14, 1944, but it predictably came to nothing. The numerous drafts of Vorworte (prefaces) Wittgenstein made over the years were simultaneously indications of tentative intent and of wishful thinking. Ironically, the preface to Philosophical Investigations, dated January 1945, but published only posthumously, says: “Up to a short time ago I really had given up the idea of publishing my work in my lifetime.” But Wittgenstein was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. Damned by misunderstanding if he did publish, because—as he knew—people still wouldn’t get it; damned by misunderstanding if he did not publish, because only secondhand reports would circulate, (as, for instance, Braithwaite’s). For a while, in the early 1930s, Wittgenstein tried a middle way of working with Friedrich Waismann (1896–1959), who would compose a book with Wittgenstein’s help. But as Wittgenstein found each draft to be flawed in one or another serious way, the idea predictably came to naught as well. The unfinished result was eventually published in English translation in 1965. 35.╇ Russell, Autobiography, vol. 2, 294–295. 36.╇ Ibid., 300–301. 37.╇ Wittgenstein in Cambridge, 187. 38.╇ Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 40. 39.╇ See the letters in CL, 81–83, and the dictations in NB, appendix II.

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40.╇ When Plato composed the Phaedrus, a “middle” dialogue in which “Socrates” becomes more an expression of Plato himself, he warned (275d–e): The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question them with the intention of learning something about what they’re saying, they always just continue saying the same thing. Every speech, once it’s in writing, is bandied about everywhere equally among those who understand and those who’ve no business having it.

In the Seventh Letter we are told (344b–c), whether by Plato or by someone closely connected with him: Only when these things—names, definitions, and visual and other perceptions—have been rubbed against one another and tested, pupil and teacher asking and answering questions in good will and without envy—only then, when reason and knowledge are at the very extremity of human effort, can they illuminate the nature of any object. For this reason anyone who is seriously studying high matters will be the last to write about them and thus expose his thought to the envy and criticism of men. . . . And if he has committed these serious thoughts to writing, it will be because men, not the gods, “have taken his wits away.”

Wittgenstein could have written something like this. It well expresses his concerns about publication. 41.╇ In the preface to the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein attests to the “innumerable conversations” that he had had with Ramsey. What gives him “doubtful feelings” is to “make them public”—share them with an anonymous audience. When Wittgenstein sent Russell a copy of the so-called Blue Book—dictations he had given to some students in 1933–1934 (BB, 1–74)—he knew they had circulated illicitly in bootlegged copies beyond the circle he had intended, and he felt constrained to explain: “It’s very difficult to understand them, as so many points are just hinted at. They were meant only for the people who heard the lectures” (CL, 269–270). 42.╇ Wittgenstein was actively engaged in the Moral Sciences Club all the time he was at Cambridge, except for a period of about five years (Michaelmas term, 1931, through Easter term, 1936) after some people objected that he was too involved, and dominated the discussion. (Then he was away from Cambridge altogether until Lent term, 1938.) 43.╇ “Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Georg Henrick von Wright,” 459–460. 44.╇ Public lectures that Wittgenstein gave are listed in Klagge, “The Wittgenstein Lectures,” 359–367. When I was researching the provenance of “Notes for the “Philosophical Lecture’ ” (MS 166) in the early 1990s, Grant Luckhardt pointed out to me that the British Academy held an annual “Philosophical Lecture.” With this possibility in mind I contacted Elizabeth Anscombe and Alice Ambrose to see if either of them knew anything about this. They both insisted Wittgenstein would never have agreed to address such a group. Yet they were proven wrong when, at my request, Anthony Kenny examined the minutes of the British Academy body that supervised the lecture (“Notes for the “Philosophical Lecture,’” 445). Wittgenstein was rela-

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tively free about sharing his ideas—under the right circumstances. That he declined to give the lecture in the end was officially “by pressure of other work.” It is likely the death of his close friend Francis Skinner and the beginning of his war work in a hospital were more pressing. 45.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 56–57. G. E. Moore’s original (unedited) notes from Wittgenstein’s lectures in Michaelmas term, 1930, include the following, from the first lecture of the term (Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1933, from the Notes of G. E. Moore, October 13, 1930): “You can’t acquire it [philosophy] by having lectures: only way is to discuss.” 46.╇ See David Stern’s careful discussion in “Seeing the Philosophical Investigations as a Dialogue,” §1.3 in his Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction, where he identifies at least three voices. He sees the Investigations as “an exchange between a number of different voices, none of which can be unproblematically identified with the author’s” (22). (It is worth noting that Wittgenstein’s uses of quotation marks and dashes to indicate alternative voices do not seem to me to be completely reliable.) The idea that there is not a controlling—authorial—voice in the Investigations can be compared with Mikhail Bakhtin’s interpretation of Dostoevsky’s novels in “Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Novel and Its Treatment in Critical Literature,” chapter 1 of his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (first published in 1929). Bakhtin’s brother— Nicholas Bachtin—was a close friend of Wittgenstein. 47.╇ December 26, 1948; C&V, 77/88. Throughout, for references to C&V I give two page numbers, since the revised 1998 edition is not published in the United States. See also Leavis (“Memories of Wittgenstein,” 51): “In relation to philosophic discussion I heard it said: ‘Wittgenstein can take all sides himself; he answers before you’ve said it—you can’t get in.’”

2â•… Can We Understand Wittgenstein? 1.╇ According to Anthony Kenny, “Aquinas and Wittgenstein,” 235. Concerning the brevity of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein remarked to Drury in 1949 (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 159): “[C. D.] Broad was quite right when he said of the Tractatus it was highly syncopated. Every sentence of the Tractatus should be seen as the heading of a chapter, needing further exposition. My present style is quite different; I am trying to avoid that error.” The 2001 third edition of PI consists of 197 pages of English; the 2009 fourth edition of 243 pages. As with the various editions of the Tractatus, these differences in length are only matters of arranging and spacing passages on the pages. 2.╇ Philosophische Untersuchungen: Kritisch-genetische Edition, 209. 3.╇ What Wittgenstein sees as “stammering” in 1931 could be seen in another way. Michael Nedo, editor of the Wiener Ausgabe—Wittgenstein’s notebooks from 1929 to

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1933—has taken the position that Wittgenstein’s writings, at least from this period, are like musical compositions (interview in Tait, “Mind over Music”): Wittgenstein, rather than achieving the meaning he is striving for in a single sentence, very often writes complexes of variant sentences, so that his manuscripts can come to resemble an orchestral score, where the desired result is obtained only when the different parts are played in harmony. . . . He wrote completely differently from an academic, more like a fugue with repetitions of themes reappearing in changing circumstances. This is how you understand something, by looking at it again and again, first this way, then that, as you do a musical theme. . . . His [editors] make the mistake of striking out the repetitions so the changing nature of his writing is lost.

On the other hand, there is the recollection of a math student who attended one of Wittgenstein’s public lectures (“Wittgenstein and the Trinity Mathematical Society,” 375): “Wittgenstein started speaking, but halted before he had finished the first sentence, and said ‘That’s not what I meant to say, what I meant to say was: . . . ’ He began a second sentence, halted before he had finished it, and said: ‘That’s not what I meant to say, what I meant to say was: . . . ,’ began a third sentence, and halted . . . and so on for a whole hour. As my memory goes, he did not say one complete sentence in the whole hour.” And the report of the mathematician Littlewood on a series of eight meetings he had with Wittgenstein in May 1930 (Wittgenstein in Cambridge, 187): “Wittgenstein never finished a sentence, except to say ‘It is impossible,’ and there was an obbligato of ‘I am amiss.’” 4.╇ Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 98. 5.╇ Von Wright, “The Origin and Composition,” 130. 6.╇ Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 160, and also “Notes for Conversations,” 79. I’m unsure how expressing what music had meant in his life would help him be better understood. The point here is that he worried he would not be understood. 7.╇ In “the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (Republic, 607B), we can see Wittgenstein wishing to side against Socrates but, I would say, with Plato—who found ways of making philosophy poetic—yet feeling unable to participate in the quarrel except on Socrates’ terms. 8.╇ It is possible to draw a parallel with Socrates here. It might be said that Socrates did not write down any of his ideas because his main concern was to draw out and test the beliefs of others. Perhaps certain confused beliefs tended to be common, but the discussions of Socrates were ad hominem—depending on what beliefs his particular interlocutor held. It is not possible to anticipate these in every case. It is interesting that when Plato comes to write dialogues with Socrates as a character, he re-creates particular situations, and has Socrates make claims within those situations. It is a further move, by us, to interpret these claims as applicable to some wider range of cases—as being theses. Plato addresses the anonymous reader only by way of Socrates addressing a particular character, in a particular situation. And in the Apology, where Socrates is forced to address a nearly anonymous audience, he is

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most reluctant (19a), and he sometimes lapses into questioning his accusers (24d– 27d), and then addressing his supporters (39e). 9.╇ Philosophische Untersuchungen: Kritisch-genetische Edition, 209. 10.╇ Ibid., 209. It is hard to say whether Wittgenstein meant anything in particular by the change from “dunkeln” (in the 1938 preface) to “Finsternis” (in the 1945 preface). The latter has a possibly spooky connotation to it—as used in Grimm’s Tales, for example. In a discussion with his friend Con Drury in the mid-1930s, commenting on Hitler’s control of Germany, Wittgenstein remarked (Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 138): “Just think what it must mean, when the government of a country is taken over by a set of gangsters. The dark ages are coming again. I wouldn’t be surprised, Drury, if you and I live to see such horrors as people being burnt alive as witches.” This could be taken as evidence for a narrower reading of the qualms Wittgenstein expressed in the prefaces. But it really is quite puzzling how this situation would make understanding of Wittgenstein’s investigations especially difficult, and then presumably only temporarily so. 11.╇ “Some Notes on Conversations,” 79, where Drury is commenting specifically on this passage in the preface to PI. 12.╇ McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 8. 13.╇ See also McGuinness, “In the Shadow of Goethe,” 448–451. A much later (1949) conversation with Bouwsma (Wittgenstein: Conversations, 39), quoted and discussed below in chapter 4, confirms his continued conception of himself in this way. 14.╇ According to Drury (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 113), in 1930 “Wittgenstein advised me to read Spengler’s The Decline of the West. It was a book, he said, that might teach me something about the age we were now living in. It might be an antidote to my ‘incurable romanticism.’” While Wittgenstein was clearly interested in the outline of Spengler’s views, he warned Drury: “I don’t trust Spengler about details. He is too often inaccurate. I once wrote that if Spengler had had the courage to write a very short book, it could have been a great one.” See also Wittgenstein’s numerous comments on Spengler in “Movements of Thought,” and in C&V. Wittgenstein’s ongoing interest in Spengler into 1950 is confirmed by von Wright’s editorial comments in “Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Georg Henrik von Wright,” 478. 15.╇ Spengler, Decline of the West, v. 1, 39. 16.╇ Ibid., 31–32. 17.╇ For other discussions of Spengler’s influence on Wittgenstein, see the work of S. Hilmy (The Later Wittgenstein, 190–194, 299–301), James Peterman (Philosophy as Therapy, 60–71) and Rudolf Haller (“Was Wittgenstein Influenced by Spengler?”). And for a general account of the distinction between culture and civilization as it functions in Wittgenstein’s thought, see the work of Yuval Lurie (“Wittgenstein on

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Culture and Civilization”) and especially William DeAngelis (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1–64). 18.╇ Spengler, Decline of the West, v. 1, 40. 19.╇ I will comment here on a lecture by Stanley Cavell, “Declining Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture,” since the application there of Spengler to Wittgenstein is notably different from mine. Nevertheless, there is no question of who is right or who is wrong—the issue is how much we can learn from various comparisons. For Cavell, the primary text for reflection is PI §116: When philosophers use a word—“knowledge,” “being,” “object,” “I,” “proposition,” “name”— and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?— What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

Cavell sees Spengler’s culture as characterized by people using words in their home language-games, and civilization as people using words (or, endeavoring to use words) without the criteria of their home language-games (65): I will suggest, without argument, that what Wittgenstein means by speaking outside language games, which is to say, repudiating our shared criteria, is a kind of interpretation of, or a homologous form of, what Spengler means in picturing the decline of culture as a process of externalization.

This strikes me as a stretch. But this then even leads Cavell to use the metaphor of “exile,” though in a way different from mine (34): “in philosophy (whatever that is) words are somehow ‘away,’ as if in exile, since Wittgenstein’s word seeks its Heimat [homeland, native place].” The Philosophical Investigations is then aimed at revealing and correcting the civilized use of homeless words in these dark times. I do not disagree that philosophers sometimes (mis)use words in this way. But if such misuse of words is the primary objection, then Wittgenstein is taking issue with philosophers, not with the civilization of our times. I see no evidence that the misuse of words outside their home language game is somehow characteristic of our times. (Though perhaps we could see Alasdair MacIntyre’s work as making this case for our uses of moral language.) Furthermore, Wittgenstein’s concern about the darkness of our times is closely connected with his sense that he will not be understood. Yet if Cavell’s use of the metaphor were appropriate, the problem would be in understanding the (“civilized” speakers of) “exiled” words being misused. Wittgenstein, by contrast, would be well understood, since he would be speaking (on behalf of) words in their everyday (cultured) use. While I do not wish to minimize the importance of Wittgenstein’s opposition to using words outside their everyday use, I think that concern is not directly connected with his sense of alienation from modern civilization—as articulated by Spengler. My understanding of the metaphor of exile, and Wittgenstein’s understanding of Spengler’s culture–civilization contrast, will be developed further in chapters 4 and 6. Essentially, in my view, it is Wittgenstein himself who is exiled from his home culture and alienated from his civilizational surroundings.

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20.╇ Janik and Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, 22. Wittgenstein expressed mixed feelings about the sources of difficulties in his notebook (September 11, 1946; MS 132, 7): “Are we dealing with errors and difficulties that are as old as language? Are they, so to speak, sicknesses that are tied to the use of language, or are they of a special nature, characteristic of our civilization?” 21.╇ The notion of a basic physiological difference between author and reader as an impediment to understanding was offered by the American philosopher Charles Peirce (1839–1914) (Values in a Universe of Chance, 415): “my habits of thinking are so different from those of the generality of people. Besides I am left-handed (in the literal sense) which implies a cerebral development and connections of parts of the brain so different from those of right-handed people that the sinister is almost sure to be misunderstood and live a stranger to his kind, if not a misanthrope.” Although Wittgenstein himself never invoked this sort of explanation for the difficulty of understanding his work, it has been recently suggested by Jaakko Hintikka. Hintikka claims, on a rather slim basis, that Wittgenstein was dyslexic, and uses this to account for Wittgenstein’s lack of linear arguments and for the oddity of some of his views—for example, about rule-following. Here is the passage Hintikka quotes (Weiner Ausgabe, v. 3, 278; translated in McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 52): “My bad spelling in youth up to the age of about 18 or 19, is connected with the whole of the rest of my character (my weakness in study).” That’s not much to hang a diagnosis on. And the diagnosis seems to be contradicted by the passage (PI, Part II, 198/209) in which Wittgenstein says that “Pleasure,” written in cursive, is “easy” to copy, but the same thing written backward is “hard to copy.” Mayoclinic.com reports: “Reversals of letters (b for d) and a reversal of words (saw for was) are typical among children who have dyslexia. Reversals are common for children age 6 and younger who don’t have dyslexia. But with dyslexia, the reversals persist.” 22.╇ Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 113. 23.╇ What are we to make of the fact that in the Socratic dialogues discussion generally ends before a satisfactory definition is found? When Wittgenstein was discussing the Socratic dialogues with his friend Drury sometime around 1930, Drury suggested (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 116): “It may be significant that those dialogues in which Socrates is looking for precise definitions end, all of them, without any conclusion. The definition he is looking for isn’t reached, but only suggested definitions refuted. This might have been Socrates’ ironical way of showing that there was something wrong in looking for one exact meaning of such general terms.” Apparently Wittgenstein did not pick up on this suggestion. But it is interesting that Spengler calls Socrates a “nihilist” (Decline of the West, v. 1, 352). 24.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 120/236 (October 11, 1946). Since this edition of the lectures contains notes from three different students, the dual reference indicates where two different students noted the same point. Wittgenstein declines to call terms “indefinable,” but rather “undefined.” See also “The Language of Sense Data,” 366–367.

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25.╇ At PI, §77, Wittgenstein parenthetically alludes to “goodness” in a way that suggests he would extend his anti-essentialism to it. In lectures in Easter term, 1933, Wittgenstein discussed “goodness” more fully in a way that parallels his discussion of games (Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1932–1935, 33): In view of the way we have learned the word “good” it would be astonishing if it had a general meaning covering all of its applications. I am not saying it has four or five different meanings. It is used in different contexts because there is a transition between similar things called “good,” a transition which continues, it may be, to things which bear no similarity to earlier members of the series. We cannot say “if we want to find out the meaning of ‘good’ let’s find what all cases of good have in common.” They may not have anything in common.

See also Eine Philosophische Betrachtung, 190 (August 25, 1936): If we were asked about the essence of punishment, or about the essence of revolution, or about the essence of knowledge, or of cultural decay, or the meaning of music,—then we would not try to specify something that all of the cases had in common,—that which they all are intrinsically—that is to say an ideal that is embodied in all of them; but rather examples, as it were, foci of variation.

26.╇ “The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience,” 367. 27.╇ See the entry for “Game” in Wikipedia. 28.╇ See C&V, 30/35; October 1, 1937. Recall G. E. Moore’s discussion of Good in Principia Ethica. While he insists that it cannot be defined, his evidence for this is really inductive—none of the proposed definitions succeed. They all fail the “open question” test. But Moore offers no reason to suppose all proposed definitions must fail the test. It was only later nondescriptivists, like R. M. Hare (The Language of Morals), who offered principled arguments against the possibility of definition. 29.╇ Voices of Wittgenstein, 33 (probably 1931–1933). 30.╇ Big Typescript, 56 (in 1933). 31.╇ My Philosophical Development, 161. 32.╇ The 2009 fourth edition of PI treats “Part II” as “Philosophy of Psychology—A Fragment,” numbering paragraphs within sections. Its pagination also differs from that in the original edition (though it does provide interlinear pagination from the original edition). Hence, for passages in Part II, I give the page number of the original edition/page number of the 2009 edition. (I have left out the 2001 third edition altogether, which has yet different pagination.) 33.╇ Spengler, Decline of the West, v. 1, 352. 34.╇ Waismann, Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, 80; and also Voices of Wittgenstein, 311. 35.╇ PI, §122. Here it becomes obvious, perhaps for the first time, that the translation differs from Anscombe’s original translation. I have often selectively employed

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Hacker and Schulte’s modified translations, but will not generally acknowledge the occasions. The long-time English reader of Wittgenstein will notice. 36.╇ Wittgenstein quotes from or cites the Theaetetus many times in his manuscripts, as well as in PI. British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) appears to have been the first to formulate explicitly an inverted spectrum scenario. In the chapter of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding entitled “Of True and False Ideas” (Book II, xxxii, 15) he writes: Neither would it carry any imputation of falsehood to our simple ideas, if by the different structure of our organs it were so ordered, that the same object should produce in several men’s minds different ideas at the same time; v.g. if the idea that a violet produced in one man’s mind by his eyes, were the same that a marigold produced in another man’s, and vice versa. For, since this could never be known, because one man’s mind could not pass into another man’s body, to perceive what appearances were produced by those organs; neither the ideas hereby, nor the names, would be at all confounded, or any falsehood be in either. For all things that had the texture of a violet, producing constantly the idea that he called blue, and those which had the texture of a marigold, producing constantly the idea which he as constantly called yellow, whatever those appearances were in his mind; he would be able as regularly to distinguish things for his use by those appearances, and understand and signify those distinctions marked by the name blue and yellow, as if the appearances or ideas in his mind received from those two flowers were exactly the same with the ideas in other men’s minds.

Or, more simply, could it be that objects we both call “blue” look to me the way objects we both call “yellow” look to you? Locke supposes this is indeed possible. He imagines that these differences in “appearances” or “ideas” would not manifest themselves in any behavioral differences, though in his scenario these differences are produced by the “different structures of our organs.” A true dualist would not even need this last explanation to find the scenario conceivable. While Locke gives a clear expression of the possibility of the inverted spectrum, there is no direct evidence that Wittgenstein was familiar with Locke’s account. 37.╇ Tiresias, the famous soothsayer in Sophocles’ Theban cycle of plays, supposedly became blind in the following way (Apollodorus, Gods and Heroes of the Greeks, 147): Hesiod says that Tiresias saw snakes copulating on Mount Cyllene and, after wounding them, was changed from a man to a woman. Having observed the same snakes copulating again, he was changed back to a man. For this reason Hera and Zeus who were arguing whether women or men get more pleasure from making love, asked his opinion. He said that a woman gets nine times as much pleasure from love-making as a man does. For this Hera blinded him.

This fascinating story is perhaps the earliest version of the problem of private experience, though here the privacy is apparently a gender privacy rather than an individual privacy. Given Hera’s anger at Tiresias’ revelation, the story implies that Hera (and women) already knew what Zeus (and men) experienced, and were able to compare. So there seems to be an asymmetry of privacy as well. Only men need to ask: “Was it as good for you as it was for me?” And women apparently rarely lie when they reply: “Oh, yes.”

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38.╇ “Review of Husserl,” 198. 39.╇ “Notes for the ‘Philosophical Lecture,’” 450 (probably 1941). 40.╇ “The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience,” 356–357, verified by Macdonald’s notes, “Personal Experience,” 92. Wittgenstein did write much earlier (1930; PR, 88): “The worst philosophical errors always arise when we try to apply our ordinary—physical—language in the area of the immediately given.” 41.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 17/256 (1946). 42.╇ And treated as though it could be named—which Wittgenstein rejects (“The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience,” 319). 43.╇ Frege (“Thoughts,” 361) writes: For when the word ‘red’ is meant not to state a property of things but to characterize sense impressions belonging to my consciousness, it is only applicable within the realm of my consciousness. For it is impossible to compare my sense-impression with someone else’s. For that, it would be necessary to bring together in one consciousness a sense-impression belonging to one consciousness and a sense-impression belonging to another consciousness. . . . But might it not be possible that my ideas, the entire content of my consciousness, might be at the same time the content of a more embracing, perhaps Divine consciousness?

But commenting on this encompassing “Divine consciousness” that might have and compare our sensations, Frege continues: “this so far oversteps the limits of human understanding that we must leave this possibility out of account.” 44.╇ “The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience,” 359 (May 25, 1936). 45.╇ “Notes for Lectures,” 235. 46.╇ PI, §276, and cf. “Discussions between Wittgenstein, Waddington, and Thouless,” 392. 47.╇ Z, §433, which repeats RPP1, §444. 48.╇ That is, I have his pen if the pen I have can be traced back along a continuous path through space and time to the pen he had. To have his pen is not simply to have a pen “just like” his, but to have the very pen he had. 49.╇ That is, I have “the same” headache I had last week if it feels the same. I have “the same” haircut I got last time if it looks the same. In cases like these, sameness depends on “qualitative indiscernibility”—i.e., no difference in qualities. 50.╇ Frege raises a related point himself (“Review of Husserl,” 198): “To be able to compare one person’s idea with another’s, one would have to unite them in the same consciousness, and one would have to be certain that they had not changed in being transferred.” And again (“Thoughts,” 361): “Now even if it were possible to make an idea disappear from one consciousness and at the same time make an idea appear in another consciousness, the question whether it is the same idea would still

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remain unanswerable.” But Wittgenstein’s point is not that it is “unanswerable,” for that implies that there is an operable criterion of identity that is beyond our ken. Rather, lacking transdescriptive identity conditions—there is no question other than whether they are described alike. We could use the same objection to trying to picture God comparing our experiences—if God would describe my experience differently from the way I do, then in what sense is what God is describing my experience? “In any case,” Frege concludes, “it is impossible for us men to compare other people’s ideas with our own.” Wittgenstein’s point is that it is quite possible to compare them—by describing them. 51.╇ “Notes for the ‘Philosophical Lecture,’” 449. 52.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 34 (1946). 53.╇ “Discussions between Wittgenstein, Waddington, and Thouless,” 392 (September 10, 1941). 54.╇ See the discussion in Chalmers (The Conscious Mind, section II). 55.╇ “Notes for Lectures,” 232. 56.╇ Ibid., 285. 57.╇ “The Language of Sense Data,” 357 (May 25, 1936). 58.╇ Ibid., 301 (March 4, 1936). 59.╇ “Notes for the ‘Philosophical Lecture,’” 453. 60.╇ “Discussions between Wittgenstein, Waddington, and Thouless,” 382 (May 28, 1941). 61.╇ Ibid., 383. 62.╇ Gasking and Jackson, “Ludwig Wittgenstein,” 144; and Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 44. 63.╇ Smythies, The Whewell’s Court Lectures. Since the notes also include a comment by Lewy, the notes must date between 1938 and June 1945. 64.╇ “Discussions between Wittgenstein, Waddington, and Thouless,” 391 (September 6, 1941). 65.╇ “The Language of Sense Data,” 296 (March 3, 1936). 66.╇ “Notes for the ‘Philosophical Lecture,’” 450. 67.╇ “The Language of Sense Data,” 355 (May 20, 1936). 68.╇ Ibid., 302 (March 4, 1936). 69.╇ The last sentence is repeated virtually verbatim in RFM, 406.

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70.╇ “Philosophy,” 161–163 (1933). 71.╇ “1967 Dublin Lecture,” 8. 72.╇ Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 44. 73.╇ On the other hand, another of Wittgenstein’s close student-friends, Elizabeth Anscombe, has written (quoted by Engelmann, “Introduction,” to Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, xiv): “I must confess that I feel deeply suspicious of anyone’s claim to have understood Wittgenstein. That is perhaps because, although I had a very strong and deep affection for him, and, I suppose, knew him well, I am very sure that I did not understand him. It is difficult, I think, not to give a version of his attitudes, for example, which one can enter into oneself.” 74.╇ The question of how Wittgenstein could understand himself may seem fanciful, but it is worth noting that when Wittgenstein had completed his course of lectures in 1936 and retreated to Norway, he reflected in his diary (November 23, 1936; “Movements of Thought,” 153, and cf. 303): “In my lectures, for example, I have often cheated by pretending already to understand something while I was still hoping that it would become clear to me.” And more directly (August 19, 1925; Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 55): “But how could I expect you to understand me when I barely understand myself.” 75.╇ Consider Wittgenstein’s remark to Drury (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 121): “It is essential that you get away from Cambridge at once. There is no oxygen in Cambridge for you. It doesn’t matter for me as I manufacture my own oxygen.” 76.╇ I have emphasized Wittgenstein’s suspicion that he would not be understood, and I have tried to account for our difficulty understanding Wittgenstein, both in his early work and in his later work. But I do not wish to suggest too much unity here. In both cases I think biographical information and information about how Wittgenstein thought of himself are relevant. The difficulties with understanding the early work have to do (at least) with the breadth of topics covered and Wittgenstein’s background experiences. The difficulties with the later work have to do (at least) with differences of temperament. The culture–civilization distinction does not play into the early work (save for a case—TLP 6.371–372—discussed in chapter 10). Indeed, Spengler’s book was only published after the war. My main interest here is in his later work, though I do not myself insist on any clear distinction. For appreciating the difficulties of understanding his later work I think that the issue of temperament is important, and I think it can often be captured by the notion of exile.

3â•… What Is Understanding? 1.╇ I have surveyed and analyzed Wittgenstein’s use of the notion of “consists in [darin besteht]” in Klagge, “An Unexplored Concept.” There I call Wittgenstein a “constitutivist” (478) about understanding.

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In discussing the case of musical understanding, Wittgenstein writes (1946; C&V, 51/58): “What does it consist in, following a musical phrase with understanding, or, playing it with understanding? Don’t look inside yourself.” Rather (1948; C&V 70/80): “Someone who understands music will listen differently . . . , play differently, hum differently, talk differently about the piece than someone who does not understand.” 2.╇ The point that one can understand without accepting is made against Wittgenstein in an extensive footnote from Karl Popper, in which he accuses Wittgenstein’s philosophy of being “esoteric”—in the sense that it is only for insiders (The Open Society, v. 2, 299, note 52): “It is characteristic . . . especially of the esoteric systems that their admirers assert of all critics that ‘they do not understand’; but these admirers forget that understanding must lead to agreement only in the case of sentences with trivial content. In all other cases, one can understand and disagree.” Of course, Wittgenstein himself characterizes his claims as “trivial” (Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1932–1935, 44): “This comment may be trivial, like all the comments we shall make; but what is not trivial is seeing them all together.” And also his opening comment to Thouless (May 28, 1941; “Discussions between Wittgenstein, Waddington, and Thouless,” 382): “Wittgenstein started by saying that all statements he would make would be obviously true. If I could challenge any of them he would have to give way. Might seem trivial and unimportant because so obviously true. By going over things already known to and accepted by me, he would make me see things in a new way.” 3.╇ As Anscombe wrote, quoted in the previous chapter (Engelmann, “Introduction” to Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, p. xiv): “I must confess that I feel deeply suspicious of anyone’s claim to have understood Wittgenstein. That is perhaps because, although I had a very strong and deep affection for him, and, I suppose, knew him well, I am very sure that I did not understand him. It is difficult, I think, not to give a version of his attitudes, for example, which one can enter into oneself, and then the account is really of oneself.” (The italics are mine.) That is, it is difficult to view the issues with his temperament, rather than with one’s own temperament. And failure to do so results in misunderstanding. Or so Wittgenstein put it in his discussions with Thouless (also quoted in the last chapter): When Thouless continues to want to talk about “what colours looked like,” Wittgenstein says (“Discussions between Wittgenstein, Waddington, and Thouless,” 391): “Oh, there is an awful misunderstanding between us. A terrible misunderstanding.” 4.╇ “Philosophy,” 161. 5.╇ And Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1932, 63 (Easter term, 1931): “Doing philosophy may perhaps mean resignation of temperament but never of intellect.” 6.╇ The problem of accounting for why someone’s views are not more appreciated has also arisen in an ancient context—Jesus’ reception in the first century ce. It can hardly be doubted that Jesus spoke in parables partly because he thought they would

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be most easily understood by the peasants who were his primary audience. It seems most likely that they understood his message well enough, but found it unconvincing. The Gospel writers, however, wrote about Jesus after his death for an audience of people who knew about Jesus’ unpopularity and consequent death. They needed to explain to believers and potential believers why Jesus’ message was not more successful than it was during his lifetime. The Gospel writers made use of a passage from the Septuagint (i.e., Greek) version of Isaiah that was intended to account for why Isaiah’s prophecies would not be accepted (6:9–10): “So He [the Lord] told me to go and say to the people: ‘No matter how much you listen, you will not understand.’” (Apparently the Lord is understood to make the people stubborn as a kind of advance justification of their suffering to come.) Jesus and his listeners are then presented as a later instance of this ancient prophecy (Luke 8:9–10): “His disciples asked Jesus what this parable meant, and he answered, ‘The knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of God has been given to you, but to the rest it comes by means of parables, so that they may look but not see, and listen but not understand.’” So the failures of Isaiah and later Jesus are made to be part of God’s will, and the means of this failure in Jesus’ case is made to be his use of parables—as though parables were intended to obscure his message from “the rest.” The rest were prevented from accepting the message because they were given it in a form that they supposedly could not understand. In this case the problem of understanding could be corrected by “some special instruction about abstruse things.” The disciples understood because “knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of God” was given to them (Luke 8:11–15). Compare this with the scholarly interpretation of Plato’s (not Socrates’) teaching, according to which the dialogues were meant for outsiders—the public—while some of Plato’s real views—the most important—were given only orally to insiders. This is the so-called Tübingen interpretation of the dialogues (cf. Krämer, Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics), from the early 1960s. Supposedly Plato taught a set of esoteric doctrines orally, which he was not able to write down. (The strongest evidence for this weak and mostly rejected methodology is found in the passages quoted in chapter 1 from the Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter.) The Tübingen Plato does not intend to conceal, unlike the Lukean Jesus, but is constrained by the supposed dangers of writing, to which Wittgenstein was sensitive. 7.╇ Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine recounts just this situation in his early schooling at Linz (“My Brother Ludwig,” 1–2): “one of his schoolfellows told me that at first Ludwig seemed to be like a being from another world [aus einer fremden Welt]. His ways were completely different from theirs. . . . and I can imagine that to him it was his schoolfellows who seemed to come from another world, and a terrible world at that!” 8.╇ “Movements of Thought,” 101 (May 6, 1931). 9.╇ Wittgenstein in Cambridge, 450 (August 23, 1949).

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10.╇ “Movements of Thought,” 133 (July 11, 1931). 11.╇ Wittgenstein in Cambridge, 218 (December 22, 1933). 12.╇ It has to be admitted that the passages I have quoted here indicate quite various groups that are being contrasted—a person encountering people in a strange country (who speak the same language); Europeans encountering Englishwomen; Wittgenstein encountering the English; Wittgenstein and Sraffa; and current students reading figures in the history of philosophy. There is a very similar contrast in these various cases, though none of the groups really lines up with the culture–civilization division. Yet they all have the same sort of contrast—a failure of understanding. The things I wish to emphasize are that Wittgenstein always found or placed himself on the wrong end of these contrasts, on the outside, in exile; that he construed the contrasts over and over as a failure of understanding; and that he saw the failure as a difference of temperament, referring to things like “character,” “interests,” and “movements of thought.” 13.╇ What came to be called “Moore’s paradox” was apparently raised in one form or another by G. E. Moore in lectures in the 1930s. He first mentioned it in print in 1942 in “A Reply to My Critics,” 543. Malcolm reports (Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 56) that Wittgenstein called it “the only work of Moore’s that greatly impressed him.” In a letter to Moore in October of 1944 (CL, 315–317) Wittgenstein comments on a version that Moore presented to the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club. Wittgenstein went on to lead a discussion about the topic at the October 25, 1945, meeting of the Club (Klagge, “The Wittgenstein Lectures,” 336–337), and to mention aspects of the paradox in section x of Part II of PI. 14.╇ Of course it can happen that I see (and recognize that) a foreign person is talking and yet not speak the language and hence not be able to understand the person. In this case (lacking semantic understanding) we judge the person to be talking based on the fact that it is a person (and people talk), and presumably based on the rhythm of the sounds and reactions of and interactions with others (which sufficiently resemble those of known talkers). In the case of the lion all these are lacking, so all we could go on would be the semantic understanding of the sounds. G. E. Moore’s original (unedited) notes from Wittgenstein’s lectures in Easter term, 1933 (Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1933, from the Notes of G. E. Moore, April 24, 1933) include: If you hear a prop[osition], wh[ich] you understand, we all of us have more or less characteristic experiences connected with prop[osition] & even with particular words. If I said a Chinese word, e.g., “bo,” there would be no other characteristic experience except just the sound. Naturally we can’t hear “table” as a mere noise (not that this fact interests us very much) . . . bec[ause] we know the language. There’s again a difference between hearing a Japanese and hearing a dog bark—we feel that former is a language.

15.╇ This is a point made in an only slightly different context by Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” 186.

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4â•… Exile 1.╇ Wittgenstein never conceived of Parts I and II of the Investigations as parts of the same book. Rather, what he conceived as his “book” was Part I (Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 75). (And there are even questions about the inclusion of the last few hundred sections. For more on these issues, see Stern, “How Many Wittgensteins?” and Schulte, “What Is a Work by Wittgenstein?”) Part II was probably published along with Part I out of convenience, more than anything else. As a current trustee of Wittgenstein’s estate has suggested: “The editors no doubt felt that it would be misleading . . . to conceal that after the completion of the Investigations (Part I) his thoughts on some crucial issues were taking a different turn before he died” (Kenny, “A Brief History,” 341). The four-volume commentary on the Investigations, initiated by Baker and Hacker, and completed by Hacker, covers only Part I. (See p. xvi of the preface to Wittgenstein: Mind and Will for Hacker’s explanation.) The unity of the Investigations now is more a function of its binding, and of its readers—we have come to see it “as” one book. A new fourth edition of the Investigations, published in 2009, retitles Part II as “Philosophy of Psychology—A Fragment.” 2.╇ PI, Part II, 196–197/207. A recently published children’s book (Rosenthal, Duck! Rabbit!) does a nice job of spelling out the ambiguities. It ends with a new ambiguous figure—the anteater–brachiosaurus. 3.╇ Our ability to see certain shapes as essential, and others as inessential, to a certain picture is crucial to our ability to appreciate so-called ambigrams—shapes that can be interpreted as the same word written in symmetric reflections. (These were popularized most recently in Dan Brown’s novel, Angels and Demons.) This human ability to see certain shapes as certain letters is being exploited on Web sites to avoid user login by programs. So-called CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) employ increasingly oddly formed words in the hope that humans but not computers will be able to recognize them as words. 4.╇ Monk, “Philosophical Biography,” 5ff. 5.╇ Unlike the Exodus story, which is equally important but better known because fully described. My brief account of the exile draws on 2 Kings 24:8–20 and 25:1–12; Jeremiah 52:1–16; 2 Chronicles 36:22–23; and Ezra 1 and 2. See also Spengler, Decline of the West, v. 2, 207. 6.╇ The story I have told of the Hebrew experience of exile is told as a historical account. Although the account is not thoroughly documented, it is widely believed to have a historical basis. There is good reason to think that Wittgenstein was well acquainted with the Hebrew Bible account of the exile. Not only was he quite biblically literate, but we also know that he read at least some of Renan’s Peuple d’Israël in 1930 (C&V, 5/7). The early chapters of Renan’s multivolume work do for the early Israelites what Sir George Frazer’s Golden Bough did for ancient pagan peoples—disrespect and belittle them and their beliefs. It is this aspect of Renan’s work that led

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Wittgenstein to write: “it is precisely the people of today & Renan himself who are primitive.” But if Wittgenstein managed—we don’t know—to read on to volume 3 (Book VI) he would have reached Renan’s account of the exile and return, given as history. However, this belief in the historicity of the exile and return is not universal. In particular, some recent scholars (see Carroll, “Exile? What Exile?”) have doubted whether there was a mass return to Jerusalem, suggesting that the notion of such a mass return was worked into the story in the service of a Jerusalem-centered ideology that gave the Judeans—the Jews who later lived in Jerusalem—claim to be the true continuation of the pre-exilic peoples. In other words, the stories of the Hebrew Bible may have been told and later standardized (and eventually canonized) by people who had an interest in getting later generations to see themselves as a people exiled and restored. In 1929, in a conversation with Drury (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 101), Wittgenstein allowed: “For me too the Old Testament is a collection of Hebrew folklore—yes, I would use that expression.” But folklore is often a means of identity-formation and preservation. 7.╇ 2 Kings 24:9, 20; Jeremiah 52:2–3. 8.╇ Ezra 9:4; Jeremiah 25:6; Isaiah 52:11. 9.╇ Some of discussions of the notion of exile attempt to distinguish exile from neighboring concepts. “Emigrant” is a broader term that may incorporate many different kinds of motivations. An expatriate may leave for personal or social reasons, and has no desire to return. “Displaced person” and “refugee” tend to be faceless and less dignified, the latter often referring to large masses of people, whereas “exile carries with it,” says Edward Said (“Reflections on Exile,” 144), “a touch of solitude and spirituality.” Mary McCarthy says (“A Guide to Exiles,” 50): “Exile is the noble and dignified term, while a refugee is more hapless.” 10.╇ Tabori, The Anatomy of Exile, 27. Paul Tabori’s survey of views about exile brought some responses that are interesting from a philosophical point of view (35– 36): “The conflict appeared to be between those who felt that the definitions had to be expanded and the purists who wanted them to be narrowed and restricted. And there were even some who felt that such a definition was unnecessary.” Quoting Rimvydas Silbajoris, a Lithuanian living in New York: “If there is a confusion or blending of factors, how much good does it [do] to define exiles according to categories that look good on paper, but do not correspond, in precisely this specific sense, to reality? Should not another definition be sought? How difficult will it be to maintain the validity and relevance of your definition [of] an exile as you enter into the large number of actual examples of exiles! . . . This leads to my next question. Is there any need for a stringent definition of an exile, a definition which would remain valid when you begin considering concrete examples?” Perhaps this man had been reading Wittgenstein.

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11.╇ Gass, “Exile,” 219. 12.╇ Benjamin, “The Image of Proust,” 205. 13.╇ Breytenbach, “The Exile as African,” 181; Seidel, Exile and the Narrative Imagination, ix. 14.╇ Cortázar, “The Fellowship of Exile,” 172. 15.╇ Nicomachean Ethics, 1157a30–33. 16.╇ McCarthy, “A Guide to Exiles,” 49; Tabori, The Anatomy of Exile, 37. 17.╇ Alegría, “One True Sentence,” 195. 18.╇ Tabori, The Anatomy of Exile, 38. 19.╇ Ibid., 55. Wittgenstein discusses this issue with Bouwsma (August 22, 1949) in Wittgenstein: Conversations, 33–34. 20.╇ Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination, 107. 21.╇ Pinsent, A Portrait of Wittgenstein, 79–80; September 24, 1913. 22.╇ Ibid., 85; October 1, 1913. 23.╇ Ibid., 89; March 7, 1914. 24.╇ Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine reports (“My Brother Ludwig,” 11): “Ludwig found it particularly difficult to fit in, right from the earliest childhood he suffered almost pathological distress in any surroundings that were uncongenial to him.” 25.╇ MS 134, 152; April 23, 1947, translated in Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 516. The second sentence was written in English. MS 135, 110; July 28, 1947, also translated in Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 516. This passage was written in code. 26.╇ Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 48. 27.╇ “Movements of Thought,” 55. 28.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 39. 29.╇ McCarthy, “A Guide to Exiles,” 54, 51. 30.╇ Mphahlele, “Africa in Exile,” 124. 31.╇ “Movements of Thought,” 9–149, covering a period from April 26, 1930 to January 28, 1932. 32.╇ It is painful to read the many fawning letters from Skinner to Wittgenstein (available in the Gesamtbriefwechsel). Considerable new light will be cast on Skinner’s work with Wittgenstein through the forthcoming publication of an archive of material described in Gibson, “The Wittgenstein Archive of Francis Skinner.”

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33.╇ Said, “Reflections on Exile,” 140, 145. 34.╇ Baranczak, “Tongue-Tied Eloquence,” 248. There is also, of course, commonly, the difference of language. Wittgenstein mostly avoided this problem since he wrote almost always in German, which cosmopolitan Cambridge could accept. He only ran into difficulty when his writing and lecturing (necessarily in English) intersected (“Movements of Thought,” 57; October 16, 1930): “I cannot work for myself yet [during the Michaelmas term, which had begun for him on Monday, October 13] & that is in part due to the conflict in me of the English and German modes of expression. I can really work only when I can continuously converse with myself in German. But for my lectures I must now arrange things in English & so I am disturbed in my German thought; at least until a peaceful accord has formed between the two & that takes some time, perhaps very long.” 35.╇ Breytenbach, “The Exile as African,” 15. And recall Popper’s similar characterization of what he called Wittgenstein’s esotericism, quoted in the previous chapter.

5â•… Alienation or Engagement 1.╇ Moore, “A Defence of Common Sense,” 33. The part about not being far from the surface of the earth might not seem so certain any more—or even true. But it could presumably be replaced with something like “within five light-years of the surface of the earth.” 2.╇ Quoted in Klagge, “The Wittgenstein Lectures,” 356. 3.╇ Rhees, “III. Some Developments,” 25. 4.╇ See, e.g., Hare, “What’s Wrong with Slavery,” for an illustration of the many ways that moral theory and moral intuitions can interact. For more examples, see Tittle, What If . . .: Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy. 5.╇ For instance, RPP2, §203—commenting on the language game of the builders described in PI, §2. 6.╇ “Form of life” is a much-discussed concept. In German it is Lebensform. In the 2001 50th anniversary edition of the Investigations Anscombe modified the translation to “life-form,” which strikes me as too biological. When Wittgenstein asked Rush Rhees to draft an English translation of his book for him in 1939, he suggested this term be rendered as “way of living” or “way of living of human beings” (TS 226, 10, 15). In the notes from 1950 and 1951 collected as On Certainty, Wittgenstein often used a different term: Weltbild or “world-picture.” 7.╇ I think “possible world” is a heuristic concept too. There is no objective question of what is a possible world. 8.╇ The encounter between Moore and the tribe is not much different from the encounter between a professor and a class of students. We (professors) encounter

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the students in a special room set aside for such purposes for perhaps 45 hours spread out over three months to “meet and discuss.” (In Cambridge at the time it would have amounted to many fewer hours in a term.) Wittgenstein had taught nearly four dozen such classes between 1930 and 1947. He was at times very pessimistic about their effect, concluding the class in Easter term, 1939, with the line: “The seed I’m most likely to sow is a certain jargon.” And when asked what he thought the upshot was of his teaching in the 1940s, Wittgenstein gave no answer (Klagge, “The Wittgenstein Lectures,” 359). It is not surprising that he would hold similarly low expectations for Moore and the tribe. 9.╇ How, for example, was Saddam Hussein supposed to prove that he did not have weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? 10.╇ Cf. PI, Part II, 179/188: “(‘The sky looks threatening’: is this about the present or the future?)” 11.╇ Goethe’s Faust, lines 1224–1237. 12.╇ Wittgenstein quotes the line “Im Anfang war die Tat” twice in his notebooks. Once on October 21,1937, published in “Cause and Effect,” 395, and collected in C&V, 31/36. Then again on March 19, 1951, published in OC, §402. 13.╇ Drury, “Some Conversations,” 135. 14.╇ Recounted in Mojzes, “The Current Status of the Marxist–Christian Dialogue.” 15.╇ Quoted in Míguez Bonino, Christians and Marxists, 15. 16.╇ Ibid., 8. 17.╇ Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” 173. 18.╇ It turns out that Pope John Paul II’s 1982 letter to the bishops in Nicaragua was in fact driven by his assistant, Joseph Ratzinger—now Pope Benedict XVI. And the new pope continued to wage this battle with his visit to Brazil in May 2007 (see Rohter, “As Pope Heads to Brazil”). 19.╇ On this point I side clearly against Frege (“Grundgesetze,” 259) when he asks rhetorically: “Has the question ‘Are we still Christians?’ really got a sense, if it is indeterminate whom the predicate ‘Christian’ can truly be ascribed to, and who must be refused it?” Wittgenstein himself criticizes Frege on exactly this sort of point in PI, §71. 20.╇ In conversations with Bouwsma (August 22, 1949; Wittgenstein: Conversations, 33–34) they discuss the notion of Judaism after the exile and the destruction of the Temple and the end of sacrifices. At first Wittgenstein does not see how what followed could still be Judaism, but then he came to see that there were legitimate questions and possibilities here.

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21.╇ In addition to the question how/whether one can be a Christian and a Marxist, one might ask how/whether one could be a Christian and accept evolution, homosexuality, Freud, etc. Or, is it possible to find enough common ground between Sunni and Shia Muslims, Protestant and Catholic Irish, to live peacefully? And could this common ground be rationally achieved, or could it only be achieved by fear or pressure? Just to glance at the issue of religion and science, James Gilbert undertook a sociohistorical study of their encounter between the late 1930s and the 1960s (Redeeming Culture, 3): “This . . . is [not] a book about how religion and science should relate to each other. Prescriptive advice remains for theologians and scientists or for ordinary citizens who worry about such matters. My interest is in questions of culture and history. How, in a practical and real sense, have the domains of science and religion interacted?” He was concerned with (4): “how religion and science engaged each other as elements of American culture—not just as theories and theologies but also as everyday ideas.” He found that (5): “theologians rubbed shoulders with moviemakers . . . scientists were consultants for Hollywood films . . . evangelical Protestants donned white coats and imbibed the language and arguments of science to discover a new argument from the ‘design’ of nature,” and he attributes this to “the plasticity of our culture.” In particular, as with the encounter between Marxism and Christianity (9, 10): “neither science nor religion has had a stable and permanent definition in American culture. They continually shift in meaning and in their relation to each other. . . . Determining the meaning of science in postwar culture depends in part on identifying what sort of science is under review and who the discussants are.” We associate Wittgenstein with the tendency toward isolation of different points of view. Yet he offered tools for thinking about these issues in broader ways. What is disappointing is that he did not make use of them. But for Gilbert (20): “this is the way American culture is created: not by isolated subcultures operating according to their own rules in self-styled obscurity, but by groups and individuals reacting to questions that discharge like sheet lightning across the sky.” 22.╇ However, see Klagge, “Wittgenstein’s Community,” for a more skeptical assessment. 23.╇ And recall his sister’s comment about Wittgenstein’s time in school (quoted in chapter 3): “one of his schoolfellows told me that at first Ludwig seemed to be like a being from another world [aus einer fremden Welt]. His ways were completely different from theirs . . . and I can imagine that to him it was his schoolfellows who seemed to come from another world, and a terrible world at that!” 24.╇ In Wittgenstein’s wartime diaries we get one side of the story of his relationships with his fellow soldiers. For the other side of the story one may turn to Jaroslav Hašek’s The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, a fascinating novel better known in Europe than in the United States. Written after World War I, it recounts, semi-autobiographically and comically, the Czech character’s

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attempts to deal with the (mostly) Austrian authorities. Švejk and his fellows are referred to by the Austrians as Saubande (“a band of pigs”) (60): “If Quartermaster Sondernummer says something about saubande, he’ll always add to it, very quickly, die tschechische, Czech, so that the Germans would not get offended and think it related to themselves.” 25.╇ I have recounted the difficulties Wittgenstein had getting along with fellow soldiers in World War I. Such difficulties continued during his time teaching school in rural Austria. Let these quotations from letters Wittgenstein wrote during the time suffice: Wittgenstein to Russell (October 23, 1921; CL, 169): “As regards me, nothing has changed. I am still at Trattenbach, surrounded, as ever, by odiousness and baseness. I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere. I will perhaps stay on in Trattenbach for the present year but probably not any longer, because I don’t get on very well here even with the other teachers (perhaps that won’t be better in another place)”—which, indeed, it was not. Wittgenstein to Russell (after February 7, 1922; CL, 178): “But what’s HARD is that I have to be a teacher in this country where people are so completely and utterly hopeless. In this place I have not a single soul with whom I could talk in a really sensible way. How I shall support that in the long run, God knows!” Wittgenstein to Engelmann (September 14, 1922; Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 53): “I visited a few days ago the place where I am going to teach (Hassbach, near Neunkirchen, Lower Austria), and had a very disagreeable impression of the new environment there (teachers, parish priest, etc.). God knows how this is going to work out!?! They are not human at all but loathsome worms.” He spent only a short time there. Wittgenstein to Russell (November or December, 1922; CL, 182): “I am now in another hole [Puchberg am Schneeberg], though, I have to say, it is no better than the old one. Living with human beings is hard! Only they are not really human, but rather ¼ animal and ¾ human.” And finally, Wittgenstein to Engelmann (from Otterthal, near Kirchberg am Wechsel, February 24, 1925; Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 55): “I suffer much from the human, or rather inhuman, beings with whom I live—in short it is all as usual.” 26.╇ McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 204. 27.╇ Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 43. 28.╇ Cf. Socrates’ concern about sampling the sophists’ teachings in the Protagoras (313e–314b): So if you are a knowledgeable consumer, you can buy teachings safely from Protagoras or anyone else. But if you’re not, please don’t risk what is most dear to you on the roll of the dice, for there is a far greater risk in buying teachings than in buying food. When you buy food and drink from the merchant you can take each item back home from the store in its own container and before you ingest it into your body you can lay it all out and call in an expert for consultation as to what should be eaten or drunk and what not, and how much and when. So there’s not

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much risk in your purchase. But you cannot carry teachings away in a separate container. You put down your money and take the teachings away in your soul by having learned it, and off you go, either helped or injured.

29.╇ In Luther’s German translation: “ein Fremdling geworden im fremden Lande.”

6â•… The Work of Exile 1.╇ Mein, Ezekiel and the Ethics of Exile, 239. 2.╇ Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination, 97. 3.╇ Spengler, Decline of the West, vol. 1, 44, 40. 4.╇ See also notes from lectures Wittgenstein was giving around the same time (October 13, 1930; Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1932, 21): “But once a method has been found the opportunities for the expression of personality are correspondingly restricted. The tendency of our age is to restrict such possibilities; this is characteristic of an age with declining culture or without culture.” It is unclear what Wittgenstein has in mind here by work in a big organization. But Goethe (“Campaign in France 1792,” 709), whom Wittgenstein imagined to have worked within a culture, wrote: The last twenty years, if I may be permitted a general observation, had been a curious period indeed, in which men of significant talent had gotten together and had formed groups on the basis of some shared inclination or other, while in other respects they were totally different: everyone brought along a high opinion of himself and everyone was happy with the mutual praise and forebearance that prevailed. Talent itself came to be generally and increasingly esteemed, men of talent learned how to maintain themselves and get ahead through social connections, and the advantages gained were no longer due to individuals but to the concerted efforts of groups of like-minded people.

What is perplexing is that Wittgenstein was attracted to this approach, which seems so unlike him. Of course it was unlike him in his state of exile, but perhaps he imagined flourishing in this way if he were more at home. As he lamented (May 18, 1942; C&V, 42/48–49): Put a man in the wrong atmosphere and nothing will function as it should. He will seem unhealthy in every part. Put him back into his proper element and everything will blossom and look healthy. But if he is not in his right element, what then? Well, then he just has to make the best of appearing before the world as a cripple.

How he looks to us—civilized folk—may be quite different from how he ideally imagined himself. 5.╇ The question of what to do as a man of culture living in a time of civilization, raised by Spengler and Wittgenstein, applied not only to Wittgenstein, but to others such as the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). As Lurie put it (“Wittgenstein on Culture and Civilization,” 392): “Mahler and his music provided Wittgenstein with a concrete example of the difficult predicament facing an extremely gifted artist in an age when culture has given way to civilization.” Reflecting on

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Mahler (January 14, 1948; C&V, 67/76) Wittgenstein wrote (what he might as well have written of himself): “If it is true, as I believe, that Mahler’s music is worthless, the question is what I think he should have done with his talent. For quite obviously it took a string of very rare talents to produce this bad music. Should he, say, have written his symphonies & burnt them? Or should he have done himself violence & not have written them? Should he have written them & realized that they were worthless? But how could he have realized that?” John King recounts that Wittgenstein had a photograph of Mahler, and told him (“Recollections of Wittgenstein,” 71): “you would need to know a good deal about music, its history and development, to understand him.” 6.╇ See the extensive exposition in Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, ch. XV. The solution of a philosophical problem is not achieved by the discovery of some new fact, but by the appreciation of what we already know but fail to see. This appreciation is often achieved by presenting what we know (usually about how a concept is ordinarily used) in a perspicuous or surveyable fashion. 7.╇ Cortázar, “The Fellowship of Exile,” 174. 8.╇ Rhees, “Postscript,” 208. 9.╇ Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 498. 10.╇ Wittgenstein’s attitude toward Frank Ramsey is a fascinating mixture. His respect for him is made clear in the acknowledgment he makes in the preface to the Investigations. Their periodic conversations beginning in 1923, and then regular conversations in 1929 and January 1930, were instrumental in his move away from the Tractatus. But compare with this his remarks about Ramsey in his diary (April 27, 1930; “Movements of Thought,” 15–17) just months after Ramsey’s death. See also Leavis, “Memories of Wittgenstein,” 50. 11.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, 44 (January, 1939). Wittgenstein often used the geographical metaphor for philosophy. Another explanation from his lectures (Gasking and Jackson, “Ludwig Wittgenstein,” 143): In teaching you philosophy I’m like a guide showing you how to find your way around London. I have to take you through the city from north to south, from east to west, from Euston to the embankment and from Piccadilly to the Marble Arch. After I have taken you on many journeys through the city, in all sorts of directions, we shall have passed through any given street a number of times—each time traversing the street as part of a different journey. At the end of this time you will know London; you will be able to find your way about like a born Londoner. Of course, a good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I’m a rather bad guide.

Wittgenstein compares language to the streets of an ancient city (PI, §18); and he compares philosophical confusions to geographical misconceptions (“Philosophy,” 185): “Teaching philosophy involves the same immense difficulties as instruction in geography would have if a pupil brought with him a mass of false and far too simple ideas about the course and connections of routes of rivers and mountains.” But, to

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follow out the metaphor of the ancient city, the streets and ditches are where they are—no urban renewal is in prospect. The job of a tour guide is never done. According to Desmond Lee (“Wittgenstein: 1929–1931,” 192), Wittgenstein “said once that one of the great drawbacks to a teacher’s life was that he was working always for a future he never saw, and that he was constantly having to deal with a new generation of pupils; no enduring visible result, only constantly changing generations.” Just as Wittgenstein “passed through any given street a number of times—each time traversing the street as part of a different journey,” so I also occasionally quote passages from Wittgenstein more than once, each time in relation to a different issue. 12.╇ Kolakowski, “In Praise of Exile,” 190. 13.╇ For the clearest examples—Drury, Skinner, and Smythies—see Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 334, 359, and 403, respectively. 14.╇ Ibid., 247–248. 15.╇ Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 53 (September 14, 1922). 16.╇ Waismann, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, 142. 17.╇ Spengler, Decline of the West, v. 2, 192–196; and v. 1, 16n. 18.╇ Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 55 (September 24, 1925). 19.╇ Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 229. 20.╇ Ibid., 351. 21.╇ An alternative possible explanation for Wittgenstein’s interest and trip to Russia has been raised in a very speculative way by Kimberley Cornish (The Jew of Linz, ch. 2), where he proposes that Wittgenstein was a Stalinist sympathizer and recruiter. This would be incompatible with my account here. After the search for a job in 1935 fell through, Wittgenstein thought about another career. Drury (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 136) reports that in 1936, in a letter “he went on to say that he and Francis Skinner were seriously thinking of coming to Dublin and joining me in studying medicine, and he asked me to make enquiries about the two of them entering the medical school.” In another letter to Drury “he suggested that if he did qualify as a doctor he and I might practice together as psychiatrists.” 22.╇ “Movements of Thought,” 237 (April 4, 1937). 23.╇ Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 59. 24.╇ Hayek, “Remembering My Cousin,” 129. 25.╇ Just as Wittgenstein wrote for his scattered (verstreut) friends, Goethe dedicated his Faust as follows: “Whoever used to praise my poem’s worth, if they live still,

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stray scattered [zerstreuet] through the earth. . . ,” while Isaiah addressed (Isaiah 11:12): “the scattered [zerstreuten—Luther Bible] people of Judah,” and Psalms 147:2 spoke of the “exiles [verstreuten—Luther Bible] of Israel.” 26.╇ Note that the 1930 preface in fact begins (Philosophical Remarks, 7; C&V, 6/8): “This book is written for such men as are in sympathy with its spirit,” whereas the (1945) preface to PI is clearly directed to readers about whom Wittgenstein is very pessimistic. These prefatory remarks are borne out by what follows. Whereas the Philosophical Investigations continually addresses the misguided temperament of the reader and interlocutor (as noted in chapter 2), the Philosophical Remarks hardly even alludes to issues of temperament. He only once mentions (PR, 85) what “we are tempted to say.” (There are perhaps half a dozen other such confessions in PR, compared with literally hundreds in PI.) Josef Rothhaupt argues, however, that these prefatory remarks were never intended for the PR text that they are attached to by the editors. Rather, they are more likely intended for a selection of remarks that Rothhaupt labels the “Kringel-Buch” (Rothhaupt, “Wittgenstein at Work,” 54–59). A survey of the remarks selected for the Kringel-Buch, however, shows the same result—that they do not presuppose or address wayward temptations. My conjecture is that it is only once Wittgenstein began teaching that he regularly encountered, or fully appreciated, the difficulties of reception that he then tried to address in his writings. 27.╇ When Engelmann himself described the meetings in 1916 among these friends at Olmütz he described the group precisely as a kleinen Kreis (Wittgenstein—Engelmann: Briefe, 90). 28.╇ Engelmann (Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 127) reports that Loos “once said to Wittgenstein: ‘You are me!’” Regarding Wittgenstein’s sympathy with Loos and with Kraus, see Janik (Assembling Reminders, chapters 7 and 8). For the sympathy between Ludwig and Hermine, see her notes (“Ludwig sagt . . .”) on conversations with Ludwig. Schlick was the member of the Vienna Circle with whom Wittgenstein seemed somewhat comfortable (Carnap, “Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle,” 175). 29.╇ Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 160. 30.╇ In his wartime diaries (December 8, 1914; GT, 49) Wittgenstein notes that he has bought and is reading vol. 8 of Nietzsche’s collected works. This included The Antichrist, the preface for which begins:. This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps not one of them is even living yet. Maybe they will be the readers who understand my Zarathustra. . . . Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.

In Ecce Homo (“Why I Write Such Good Books,” §1), Nietzsche writes: “it would contradict my character entirely if I expected ears and hands for my truths today: that today one doesn’t hear me and doesn’t accept my ideas is not only understand-

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able, it even seems right to me.” Just as Wittgenstein wrote for people in a hundred years, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to Malwilda von Meysenburg (September 24, 1886; Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait, 91): “I have recently sent you a book. Its title is Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. (Forgive me! It isn’t that you’re supposed to read it, much less give me your opinion of it. People will dare to read it, I suppose, some time around the year 2000. . .).” 31.╇ “Movements of Thought,” 55 (October 8, 1930). 32.╇ To see the difficulty here, it is useful to compare Spengler’s theory of history with that of Karl Marx. Spengler’s theory of history proposed that history comprised eras that internally exhibited similar stages of development, but no progress or development occurred from one era to the next. For Spengler, history was structurally repetitive. Marx supposed that movement from one stage to the next was progressive, rather than repetitive, but his stage-theory of history is at least structurally comparable to Spengler’s account of evolution within a given era, as it progressed through the earlier stage of culture, and eventually declined into the stage of civilization. Both philosophers of history had the problem of how to extend the discussion of concepts that had a home in one stage in their application to or within other stages. (We return to this issue in chapter 8.) 33.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 9 (August 5, 1949). 34.╇ Though Wittgenstein admired much in the lost culture of the West, there were few aspects of his contemporary “culture” (i.e., civilization) that interested him: some movies, especially American musicals and westerns with happy endings, detective stories, minimalist architecture, basically just amusements and the things one needed to get by—wholly without pretension. Indeed, Wittgenstein tolerated little but the light baggage of an exile, waiting for something—the return ticket home— that he never found. 35.╇ This has a distinct similarity to a passage in the Platonic Seventh Letter (330c–d): “One who advises a sick man, living in a way to injure his health, must first effect a reform in his way of living, must he not?” 36.╇ When Wittgenstein reflects on the difficulties of bringing about philosophical change, there is a parallel with the difficulties that Socrates had in getting people to listen to him. Socrates’ defenders—mainly Plato, and later Aristotle—needed to account for this difficulty. Plato’s dialogues are widely thought to have had the purpose of first defending Socrates, and later coming to terms with him. In the end, both Plato and Aristotle diagnose Socrates’ failure as a matter of his approach. Mainly his approach was too intellectual. The parable of the cave, in the Republic (514a–521b), sets the problem clearly. How can people in the cave be expected to understand what the escaped-enlightened-and-returned philosopher has to say? The philosopher is in much the same situation as Wittgenstein himself—addressing an audience from a different realm. By the time of the Republic, Plato has decided that where Socrates went wrong was in

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addressing adults whose emotions were already deeply ingrained. Aristotle despaired of this (NE 1179b5–30): Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make men good, they would justly . . . have won great rewards . . .; but as things are . . . they are not able to encourage the many to nobility and goodness. . . . What argument would remold such people? It is hard, if not impossible, to remove by argument traits that have long since been incorporated in the character. . . . The character, then, must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble and hating what is base.

To reach people it would be necessary to begin the process much earlier, when they were young, and attend to the training of their emotions as well as their intellect. This would require a much more pervasive role for education in society, as it is laid out in Books II and III of the Republic. Aristotle stipulates that his listeners already be properly raised (NE, 1095a3–11). 37.╇ “Movements of Thought,” 169 (February 4, 1937). 38.╇ Santayana, “The Philosophy of Travel,” 44. 39.╇ Quoted in Tabori, The Anatomy of Exile, 401. 40.╇ Said, “Reflections on Exile,” 145. 41.╇ Findlay, “My Encounters with Wittgenstein,” 121. Of course there is a large element of self-selection in those who wrote memoirs about Wittgenstein. There aren’t many, like Findlay, who saw him negatively. Perhaps another example is Leavis, “Memories of Wittgenstein.” 42.╇ Wittgenstein in Cambridge, 282 (September 24, 1938). 43.╇ Britton, “Portrait of a Philosopher,” 210. All four gospels cite the passage from Isaiah (quoted at the start of this chapter) in its Septuagent (Greek) version (“a voice crying in the wilderness”), and rendered by Luther: “Es ist eine Stimme eines Predigers in der Wüste.” Here Wittgenstein sounds very much like a hopeless Prediger (preacher) in the wilderness.

7â•… Philosophy and Science 1.╇ Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations,” 77. Wittgenstein told Rhees (“Editorial Notes,” 213) “that he was preparing to enter the University of Vienna to study physics under Boltzmann in the autumn of 1906. Boltzmann died in the summer of 1906.” For an account of Wittgenstein’s engineering training, see Hamilton, “Wittgenstein and the Mind’s Eye.” Based on his aeronautical research at Manchester, Wittgenstein applied for and was granted, in 1911, a patent for a combustion-driven propeller (see Hamilton, 88, 95–96 for details). The experimental work on the psychology of rhythm is summarized in Klagge, “The Wittgenstein Lectures,” 359–360. Wittgenstein’s work on the physiology of shock is recounted in Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 445–448.

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2.╇ “Philosophy,” 171 (1933). 3.╇ Musical scholars have been unable to place this fragment, so it seems to have been a (minor) composition of Wittgenstein’s. It was performed—premiered—on November 12, 2003, at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, by the Viennese Aron Quartet. “At four bars, it lasts less than 30 seconds and is little more than a powerful, fiery flourish.” Composer Anthony Powers said (Tait, “Mind Over Music”): “We haven’t found a snatch of a lost great work. But it’s like the continuation of an incomplete sentence, as if he had started to say something and hadn’t the words to finish it, and turned to music.” Indeed, the description given of the fragment nicely completes the words “I destroy, I destroy, I destroy—.” One can also imagine an accompanying gesture. 4.╇ Wittgenstein and Waismann, Voices of Wittgenstein, 123. 5.╇ “Synoptic view” is a translation of Wittgenstein’s term Übersicht. The term is notoriously difficult to translate. I have used the phrases “synoptic view” and “synopsis” because Wittgenstein apparently used them in his (English) lectures (Moore, “Wittgenstein’s Lectures,” 50, 107, 114; Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930– 1932, 26, 34). But Moore’s original unedited notes (to appear in Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1933, from the Notes of G. E. Moore ) reveal that Wittgenstein also sometimes used the more literal “overlook” to express this concept: “putting the facts in a system—helping us to overlook them” (May 22, 1933); and “enables you to overlook a system at a glance” (May 26, 1933). Also in Wittgenstein’s own notebook (MS 159 5r, in English): “The grammar of every word is enormously complicated and therefore enormously difficult to overlook.” Various translations have been offered: For Übersicht Kenny offers (“Wittgenstein on the Nature of Philosophy,” 6): “overall view.” For übersehen in PI, §122, we have Anscombe: “command a clear view”; and Hacker and Schulte: “have an overview.” For Übersichtlichkeit in PI, §122, we have Anscombe: “perspicuity”; and Hacker and Schulte: “surveyability” (also rendered in PR, 52, by Hargeaves and White, as “bird’seye view”). 6.╇ Wittgenstein’s early, and firm, characterization of the relationship between philosophy and science is likely a reaction to the views of Bertrand Russell. In 1912 Russell put his view this way (Problems of Philosophy, 155): as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton’s great work was called “the mathematical principles of natural philosophy.” Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.

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Had Russell written this fifty years later he might have added linguistics to his list. Wittgenstein was familiar with this book “which he hates” (according to Russell himself—letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, May 13, 1913, quoted in McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 173). 7.╇ Note that Wittgenstein’s example of angina has two noteworthy characteristics: It is not a philosophically perplexing concept, like, say, pain or belief; and its criteria do not lie within ordinary grasp, as those of pain or belief do, according to Wittgenstein. Thus, the example works only to illustrate the workings of criteria and symptoms in general. 8.╇ Drawing on Putnam, “Brains and Behavior,” 329ff. 9.╇ The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ publication “Inactivated Influenza Vaccine 2009–10” says: “Influenza (‘flu’) is a contagious disease. It is caused by the influenza virus. . . . Other illnesses can have the same symptoms and are often mistaken for influenza. But only an illness caused by the influenza virus is really influenza.” 10.╇ Ibid.: “[Flu] can cause: fever, cough, sore throat, headache, chills, muscle aches, fatigue.” 11.╇ Wittgenstein uses (RPP I, §129) the phrase “psychological phenomena” to cover such things as “thinking, pain, anger, joy, wish, fear, intention, memory, etc.” I sometimes use the phrase “mental state” to cover this range as well. A good discussion of the problem of grouping all these things together as “mental states” can be found in McGinn, Wittgenstein on Meaning, 102–108. 12.╇ Wittgenstein seems to suggest something like this at LW1, §413. Malcolm, (“Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,” 544) states it explicitly. 13.╇ McGinn, Wittgenstein on Meaning, 115–116. 14.╇ See, e.g., PG, 82. 15.╇ BB, 25; also PI, §354, and the end of §79. 16.╇ In a lecture on December 2, 1946, reflecting on whether a sleepwalker is “thinking,” Wittgenstein says (Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology): Geach’s notes (44): “To find something that shall be a new criterion whether the man thinks or not is to make a decision.” Shah’s notes (170): “If we disregard the possibility of finding a new criterion, there is nothing to choose between the two answers. But we like to think that there must be. In this case people often use the Law of Excluded Middle. But that does not help in any way.” And in Jackson’s version of the notes (287), Wittgenstein labels the appeal to the Law of Excluded Middle a “temptation” that is “off.”

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17.╇ The distinction between the strong and weak thesis about conceptual change, where “strong” means a stipulated or sudden change, seems to be affirmed by Wittgenstein in his lectures (January 20, 1947; Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology). He begins with (291): “You consider the nature of something, say thinking or pain; it’s a good idea to ask: Could this nature change in time?” and then he distinguishes: Jackson’s notes (292): “There seem to be two ways of changing usage: there is a trivial way, e.g. call a chair a picture; and a big way.” Edwards, “Wittgenstein’s Lectures,” 45: “We may change the use in two ways, one important and the other trivial.” What Wittgenstein calls the “trivial” way is what I connect with the strong thesis; what he calls the “big” or “important” way, but doesn’t explain, I include in the weak thesis. Then Wittgenstein goes on to say: Jackson’s notes (292): “We are tempted to say that some concepts can’t be changed. . . . But that won’t do; it’s experiential.” Shah’s notes (176): “but concepts are not given in nature.” Thus he answers his original question of whether concepts can change. 18.╇ The issues of conceptual evolution are not limited to the pressures of science. Any case where new possibilities arise and become important can exert similar pressure on our concepts. For example, the concept of a novel has been importantly influenced by the writings—however you characterize them—of Laurence Sterne, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. In fact Sterne’s Tristram Shandy was one of Wittgenstein’s favorites (Redpath, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 50; Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 133). Favorite what? Well, what else are you going to call it except a novel? Indeed, even though something may not fit well into a concept, if it attracts enough attention it can broaden that concept (Ricks, Dylan’s Vision of Sin, 15): Marlon Brando’s “acting,” and Bob Dylan’s “singing.” We could also add: Jackson Pollock’s “painting” and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “philosophizing.” What else are you going to call it? 19.╇ Toulmin, The Philosophy of Science, 51. 20.╇ The issue of whether a term is a technical term or not is being played out over the question whether Pluto is a planet. Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has been considered a planet—until recently. It turns out that plausible definitions of “planet” either leave Pluto out, or else would have to include a lot of other stuff that orbits the sun too. On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union (Tyson, The Pluto Files, Appendix F)—with 424 astronomers voting—defined the term “planet” in a way that excluded Pluto—demoting it to a “dwarf planet.” It is also sometimes called a “trans-Neptunian object.” This has led to considerable further discussion, even among the scientific community. More recently (Appendix G), March 8, 2007,

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the New Mexico state legislature considered legislation to restore Pluto’s status as a planet, at least in New Mexico: “BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that, as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico’s excellent night skies, it be declared a planet.” Clearly public opinion has favored treating Pluto as a planet, and not as treating “planet” as a technical term. Of course, astronomical terms, like terms of physics, may work differently from mental terms. But it is interesting to see a debate play out in such a visible way. Should we say, following Wittgenstein: “What is or is not a planet is for the public to decide”? In the discussion of the identity theory I have dithered over whether ordinary concepts can become, or be seen as, or turn out to be, or be treated as, technical concepts. In a seminal discussion of this issue, where Saul Kripke attacked the Fregean notion of concepts, Kripke made it seem as though the scientist discovers that, say, water is H2O (Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 128). I don’t think any astronomer would claim that astronomy is discovering what it really is to be a planet. The astronomers here are engaged in conceptual legislation, not in astronomical investigation. Of course, astronomical investigation is relevant, in discovering such things as the size and orbit of Pluto relative to other planets, the existence and size of other bodies similar to Pluto, and the fact that the barycenter of the orbit of Pluto and (its moon) Charon does not lie within Pluto—they are actually a binary system. But astronomers are not discovering what a planet is. Hilary Putnam seems to appreciate this point in his discussion of water (“The Meaning of ‘Meaning,’” 238–239). The point is not just what chemical structures can be found in water, but which ones of them are “important”—which is an “interest-relative notion.” In discussing another case, he notes (“Is Semantics Possible?” 142) that these things are not “discovered.” Rather, it is “a matter of what is the best conceptual scheme, the best theory, the best scheme of ‘natural kinds.’” Astronomers are also trying to answer this question. 21.╇ Sydney Shoemaker (“The Inverted Spectrum,” 373, 378) has argued that a sufficiently advanced neuroscience would solve the problem of the inverted spectrum by direct inspection of the brain. Putnam (“Brains and Behavior,” 332ff.) and Raymond Smullyan (“An Epistemological Nightmare”) have created philosophical stories that try to evoke different intuitions about possible criteria for the mental. Putnam’s case of the “super-spartans” (first published in 1963) is already described by Wittgenstein in Zettel (§§383–390, notes written in 1948 but not published until 1967), where he claims that this would simply amount to different concepts. 22.╇ And PG, 240. See also Davidson, “Mental Events,” 216. 23.╇ Wittgenstein considers the specific case of unconscious desire in Waismann’s notes (Voices of Wittgenstein, 413–415): “Things in turn stand very differently in respect of the ‘unconscious desire’ of psychoanalysis. Here too the desire can be regarded as a causal law governing the behaviour of the patient, but here there is yet another verification, namely that the patient is induced through therapy to ‘bring the desire to consciousness,’ i.e. to acknowledge it.”

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24.╇ The question of what, if any, limits there may be to our mental concepts under pressure of science is also raised by the (nonfictional) work of Lawrence Weiskrantz on the phenomenon of blindsight—brain-damaged people who deny that they can see things which they are nevertheless able to identify “visually.” 25.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, 148. 26.╇ Here I draw on Robert Nozick’s discussion of the “closest continuer” theory and the structuring of philosophical concepts in his Philosophical Explanations, 29–58. 27.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1932–1935, 27–28. See also Moore’s more extensive account, “Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33,” 113–114. 28.╇ Hertz, Principles of Mechanics, 7–8. 29.╇ “Cambridge Moral Science Club Meetings: Prince and Wittgenstein, February 1939,” 379; and also “Cambridge Moral Science Club Meetings: Popper and Wittgenstein, Fall 1946,” 399. 30.╇ Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 452. 31.╇ And found in context at “Philosophy,” 185–187. Recall the passage from Wittgenstein’s notebook quoted earlier in chapter 2 (September 11, 1946; MS 132, 7): “Are we dealing with errors and difficulties that are as old as language? Are they, so to speak, sicknesses that are tied to the use of language, or are they of a special nature, characteristic of our civilization?”

8â•… The Evolution of an Idea 1.╇ According to Marguerite Respinger, who was in Norway with Wittgenstein in 1931, quoted in Åmås and Larsen, “Ludwig Wittgenstein in Norway,” 44. For more details about his life in Norway, see Klagge, “Wittgenstein’s Community.” 2.╇ Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 376 (from MS 118, September 22, 1937). 3.╇ “Cause and Effect,” 373–375. 4.╇ Shankar, “Wittgenstein versus Russell,” 214. Measure for Measure is a play by Shakespeare, often classified as a “problem play,” and likely the most difficult of his plays to interpret. 5.╇ As Stich asserts in “Group Portrait of the Mind,” 374. 6.╇ As Hacker asserts in Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, v. 4, 502n. 7.╇ And also LW1, §504: “Indeed, I confess, nothing seems more possible to me than that people some day will come to the definite opinion that there is no copy in either the physiological or the nervous systems which corresponds to a particular thought, or a particular idea, or memory.”

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8.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 18; August 10, 1949. Wittgenstein’s “Lectures on Freedom of the Will” also suggest this sort of compatibilism. 9.╇ In the sense of type-reducibility, where, say, pain, as a type of mental state, does not isomorphically correlate with (and hence is not reducible to or equatable with) any type of brain state (such as, say, the firing of C-fibers). 10.╇ Hacker, Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, v. 4, 496–503. In this he is following Michel ter Hark (“Electric Brain Fields and Memory Traces,” 123–125), who, however, now thinks the target is even broader. Hilmy (The Later Wittgenstein, Chapter 6) makes a detailed and impressive case that many of Wittgenstein’s “anti-scientific” remarks are directed against contemporaries such as Russell, Odgen and Richards, William James, the Vienna Circle, and even his earlier self in the TLP. I do not disagree with this but, again, see him as having a much broader target in mind as well. Oddly, Hilmy does not examine the passages under consideration in this chapter. 11.╇ Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, 210. 12.╇ Köhler, The Place of Values, 234–235. 13.╇ MS 134, 106. The quoted passage from MS 134 makes it clear that Wittgenstein really had Köhler, a Gestalt psychologist, in mind when he wrote the surrounding passages. But isn’t there some significance in the fact that Wittgenstein did not include this remark in the typescript? Could it be that he wished to construe his remarks more broadly than the specific target he began with? Surely if meaning is use, then the meaning of the remarks in the typescript is not necessarily constrained by the more specific context in which they may have been originally composed in the manuscript. 14.╇ There are two problems with using section 908 to support the acceptance of mediated causation with the rejection of reduction: (1) Though we are asked to imagine the situation as one in which the jottings (and hence mediative mechanisms for causation) are necessary, we can as easily imagine a situation in which they were not necessary. Indeed, the seeds are offered as just such an alternate possibility. (2) Although the jottings do not themselves constitute a reduction or isomorphic correlation, one who wished to defend the need for isomorphic correlation could continue to insist that the relevant isomorphic correlation still does exist in the brain, and the jottings are merely a marker for them. 15.╇ Contrary to what Quine famously insisted, describing what I am calling “supervenience” (“Facts of the Matter,” 162–166): “No difference without a physical difference.” 16.╇ It seems to me that one of the motivations of scholars of Wittgenstein, such as Hacker, is to find an interpretation of Wittgenstein that is palatable to our ordinary sensibilities. My conception of Wittgenstein as an exile suggests that this approach may sometimes be questionable. It is clear to me that Wittgenstein sees himself as

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taking quite striking positions here. He sees our ordinary beliefs as soaked with implicit philosophical requirements that he will not accept. We must allow Wittgenstein to be radical in his views, even when they take him beyond what we might find palatable. We must allow Wittgenstein to be an exile. Once again I repeat the lines from Anscombe, last quoted in chapter 3 (Engelmann, “Introduction,” to Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, p. xiv): “It is difficult, I think, not to give a version of his attitudes, for example, which one can enter into oneself, and then the account is really of oneself.” We have to resist the inclination to give a version of his attitudes that we can enter into ourselves. 17.╇ Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief, 114. One of Wittgenstein’s students from the early 1930s, W. H. Watson, was a physics student. He went on to teach at McGill University in Canada and corresponded extensively with Wittgenstein. In 1938 he published On Understanding Physics, in which he credits (ix) Wittgenstein’s influence. In a chapter on “The Nature of Mechanism,” he brings out the temptation to insist on a mechanism by quoting the following from a lecture by Sir Oliver Lodge: Now I wish to appeal to this mass of experience, and to ask, Is not the direct action of one body on another across empty space, with no means of communication whatever—is this not absolutely unthinkable? We must not answer the question offhand, but must give it due consideration; and we shall find, I think, that wherever one body acts on another by obvious contact, we are satisfied and have a feeling that the phenomenon is simple and intelligible; but that whenever one body apparently acts on another at a distance, we are irresistibly impelled to look for the connecting medium.

Lodge’s lecture, Modern Views of Electricity, was published in 1889. 18.╇ Spengler, The Decline of the West, v. 1, 377. 19.╇ “Cause and Effect,” 411. Wittgenstein’s mention, here, of indeterminacy and action at a distance may be an echo of the appearance, in 1935, of the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen paper, in which they tried to argue for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics. The thought experiment involved symmetric particles that have moved apart, but the measurement of one is used to gain information about the other. Einstein referred to this as “spooky action at a distance” (Isaacson, Einstein, 450). 20.╇ “Cause and Effect,” 410 (lecture from late May 1938); “Cause and Effect,” 375 (notebook, September 26, 1937). 21.╇ The manuscript notes from which Wittgenstein created the 1947 typescript were composed in early April 1947. Not long after that, Wittgenstein mentioned some of these topics in his lectures. On April 28, 1947, Wittgenstein mentioned the plants and seeds. We have four sets of notes from this lecture—those by Geach, Shah, and Jackson, published in Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, as well as unpublished notes from Gilbert Harris Edwards: Geach’s notes (90): “Or like this: lily-seed always gives lilies, and rose-seed roses; but the examination of the rose-seed doesn’t tell us even under the microscope any uniform difference between it and the lily-seed.”

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Shah’s notes (220): “Imagine a kind of plant. All plant’s seeds look alike. From looking at a seed, you cannot say where it came from or what it would produce. (Suppose we use) a microscope: in spite of differences it does not matter. This is what happens in the case of psychological phenomena.” Jackson—no relevant notes. Edwards’s notes (“Wittgenstein’s Lectures,” 129): “Example. We could imagine a kind of plant or a number of plants, all of which have seeds. Thus the seed of a rose if planted will produce a rose. Yet inspection of the seed shows no way that it came from a rose. It is of philosophic importance to say: ‘Why not like this?’” So, rough as they are, the notes suggest that when Wittgenstein discussed this in 1947 he did not simply stipulate the seeds were the same but, as in the 1930s, imagined we were so far unable to distinguish them. The notes for this lecture suggest that Wittgenstein certainly did at this point have as a target reducibility, or the isomorphic connection: “There is no reason to assume that the structure of the tune was written down in the brain” (220). These notes show that Wittgenstein’s thinking about these issues in lecture was subtler than is shown in his writings at the time, at least on this point. 22.╇ What problems are involved in someone from one stage of an era (e.g., Wittgenstein, living in the civilization stage of the Western era) endorsing views from another stage (those of, say, Goethe, who lived in the cultural stage of that era)? In the 1875 “Critique of the Gotha Program,” Marx lamented (569) the misuse of “ideas which in a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish.” The danger carried over to the problem of concepts that would be understood in one way by a contemporary audience, while being meant in quite another way by the author. Terms like “just” and “unjust” had, for Marx, at best a sense that was relativized to the stability of the mode of production of the stage to which they were applied. Marx argued against using the terms in a way that would allow or encourage the common assumption that they had a progressive meaning that could transcend their application to a given stage. And since contemporary audiences would automatically make that assumption, it was better not to use them at all. Such use encouraged the idea that moral critique, rather than economic and technological development, would move history: If capitalism hasn’t developed sufficiently, then despite the moralistic critique of its horrors, we can’t (now) have a successful revolutionary transformation to communism. And, in keeping with his conception of justice, we can’t (now) say that capitalism is unjust. See the debate summarized in Geras, “The Controversy about Marx and Justice.” 23.╇ The notes we have from these 1938 lectures in “Cause and Effect” are by Rhees. Another student, Yorick Smythies, also kept notes, as did other students such as Taylor. These other notes are being edited for publication by Volker Munz as part of The Whewell’s Court Lectures. Taylor’s notes come from “Lectures on Knowledge: Lecture 5,” pp. 24–25.

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24.╇ When Wittgenstein discussed a similar case in a later lecture (Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, probably May 12, 1947), he is considering a radical position, and what it means for our temperament. Peter Geach apparently brought up a position of Russell’s (from The Analysis of Mind, 91): Geach’s notes (101): Geach:â•… As against people—like Lord Russell—who say there MUST be a microscopic difference between brains if A knows French and B doesn’t. Wittgenstein:â•… And why does it look obscurantist? Jackson:â•… Because of part-successes. Geach:â•… Because you seem to be bringing in the soul. Wittgenstein:â•… A mysterious connection to the soul? Nothing of the kind. Any change in the concept of causality is a very important change. So my saying “It needn’t be” opens a door as well as shutting one. It’s like the people who say there CAN’T be action at a distance. In such a dispute one party doesn’t understand the difficulties of the other. . . . Why this idea? “Because everything pointed to it.” Everything? No, only everything they concentrated on. So it isn’t (as Lord Russell might say) that everything points to the existence of a trace of French in the brain; only everything of the things that fill his mental vision.

Shah—no notes for that lecture. Jackson’s notes (330): “Russell said . . . ‘A man who knows French and one who doesn’t must be distinguished physiologically.’ Why must? To say the opposite is almost to suggest a new principle, a solvent. It may sound obscurantist; it may suggest: (1) disregard the great success that men have had in this direction, (2) don’t think you’ll very likely succeed in the future. This is unhappily put. All that you intend is: ‘Don’t say that you must succeed.’ Also people may say, ‘He introduces a new and unpredictable power, the soul.’ But this is not necessary. To say ‘there must be a cause’ may be supported by ‘Everything points to it’. In fact everything you notice when and where you look points to it; no more.” Edwards’s notes (“Wittgenstein’s Lectures,” 144): “To say there needn’t be so and so is like saying you needn’t look here. In such disputes one party doesn’t understand the difficulties of the other. But whatever attitude we take [is] important. Some people have the idea that the world was built to a simple plan. But who told them? Does everything have to point to it? Cf. Newtonian mechanics. Everything which people looked at pointed to it.” 25.╇ Rhees, “Five Topics,” 17. 26.╇ There is one other place in the Nachlaß in which Wittgenstein speaks of seeds, and he draws an interesting connection to mental phenomena. In a notebook that probably comes from 1944 (MS 128, 5ff.), Wittgenstein is considering a case of judging someone’s character, or his intent, from a small bit of that character or intent: Could one say: my embryonic demeanor may be absolutely characteristic of a certain mature demeanor; just as a tiny bit of a leaf is characteristic of a plant. Or it might allow yet another interpretation. If I nevertheless interpret it so in these cases—I want to say—I further develop what is undeveloped.

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If I say “I thought so”—am I judging the seed/& saying that it is the seed of such a plant/, or am I letting it grow further/& show which plant will come from it/? Suppose I say: “I wanted for a moment to cheat you.” If it was only for a moment, was it a mature cheating-desire? (To be sure, I can be mistaken, because my memory can always of course go wrong; but not on that account.) If I clearly remember everything that I saw at the time: do I have a right to say it was the Will which deceived? Yes, to be sure I have only a seed, and I am perhaps not a seed specialist; but I took it from a poppy. (Its previous history gave the bud.)

As with the previous discussion of seeds, there is no questioning that a certain plant will grow out of a certain seed. The point is what the basis for this is. Wittgenstein now takes this point and considers it on analogy with judging other people. Can we discern what someone is like from a seed itself, or must we wait to see how that person develops? (In this analogy, though, there is no knowing where the seed—of personality—came from.) As the discussion proceeds, this case becomes an illustration of Wittgenstein’s contextual construal of mental states—what mental state characterizes a person is not simply a matter of what things are true of him here and now. To find the personality in the seed would be like judging the mental state independent of its context. 27.╇ As Drury suggested (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 116) in the remark quoted in chapter 2. To this we can add Wittgenstein’s comment to Bouwsma (October 11, 1949; Wittgenstein: Conversations, 50): “Now when it comes to those early dialogues, one on courage for instance, one might read and say, ‘See, see, we know nothing!’ This would, I take it, be wholesome.” 28.╇ Science is not the only source of this urge toward mediative causality. Amateur and professional auto mechanics have it as well. And, on the other hand, not all manifestations of science have this urge. But certainly science is the salient embodiment of the urge in our culture, or rather, our civilization. 29.╇ “Bright’s disease” (BB, 21) met a fate similar to that of consumption. It was a disease associated with the kidneys, but the term is no longer used because it conflated various conditions worth distinguishing for purposes of treatment. But its name does serve in an illustration of Wittgenstein’s claim (Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 27–28) that “a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without being facetious).” Cartoon (by S. J. Perelman, 1926): Man exclaiming to his doctor: “I have Bright’s disease, and he has mine.” 30.╇ Quoted in Klagge, “The Wittgenstein Lectures,” 335. In Wittgenstein’s Conversations with Rush Rhees, edited by Gabriel Citron, Wittgenstein remarks (September 8, 1945): “‘Explanation’ is not just one sort of thing, but an enormous variety. We are inclined to concentrate on one small region of strict or formal explanation. For a philosopher, the other sorts—which are overlooked in this way, or which the scientist may feel ashamed to admit as explanation at all—may be just as important.”

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31.╇ On one specific point of the nature of explanation, Marx has seemed, at least to some modern commentators, to be at odds with the mechanistic viewpoint. The issue arises in Marx when, for example, he purports to explain people’s behavior by what their objective class interests are, without attention to what their personal interests might be. A classic illustration of this possible bifurcation of interests is a collective action situation, such as the tragedy of the commons, where it is in the interests of the community of shepherds to maintain the productivity of the common grazing area by not overgrazing, but it is in the interests of each individual shepherd to have his sheep graze as much as possible. See Buchanan, “Revolutionary Motivation and Rationality,” where he applies this point to the problem that the proletariat have an interest in revolution, but individual members may be better off as free riders. Thus, Marx often resorts to large-scale explanations without concern for what the small-scale mechanisms might be. For example, he thought Britain’s rule over India was “but the unconscious tool of history” (“British Rule,” 41) in bringing about a progressive revolution in Asia. A number of examples of suspect explanations by Marx are given and discussed by Jon Elster (§2.4.2 of Making Sense of Marx). And in the “Introduction” to the Grundrisse, Marx sums up his account of one of these kinds of explanations with (100): “This is the case with every organic whole.” Modern commentators have called Marx’s large-scale explanations “functional” (or “consequence”) explanations, and debated whether such functional explanations need grounding in individual mechanisms, in accordance with what had come to be called “methodological individualism.” As a leading exponent of methodological individualism in the social sciences, Jon Elster has insisted (“Marx, Functionalism, and Game Theory,” 63): “The mechanism need not be intentional design—but some mechanism must be provided if the explanation is to be taken seriously.” And (Making Sense of Marx, 5): “To explain is to provide a mechanism.” Marx was, in this respect, methodologically naive—he didn’t attend to the question of whether mechanisms could be set out. He was like Wittgenstein’s naive botanist, who wouldn’t “frantically look” for a mechanism. The late G. A. Cohen, an analytic defender of (parts of) Marx, acknowledged that (“Reply to Elster,” 98): “if the question how the functional explanations of historical materialism explain cannot even in principle be answered, then that would have lethal significance for historical materialism.” But Cohen goes on to argue that functional explanations might be justified by circumstantial evidence, without attention to mechanisms— much as Wittgenstein considered a similar circumstantial approach to causation in the lectures on aesthetics (quoted above). If there is a rough divide, as Spengler suggested, between the organismic explanations of culture and the mechanistic explanations of civilization, Marx lay on the cultural side of the divide on this issue. 32.╇ Wordsworth, “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface,” 477, where he attributes the line to Coleridge.

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33.╇ Watson (On Understanding Physics, 70) raises the example of Maxwell’s equations: In his theory, electric and magnetic fields at different places and times are connected by certain laws without any reference to the old-fashioned systems of connection by wheels, elastic solid and the like. His theory initiated a revolution in the style of physical theory. For the first time in the history of physics, mechanism was consciously accepted in the form of mathematical equations. Of course, the revolution is not yet complete—after all we are removed from his time by two generations only, and the pre-Maxwellian tradition is with us still by sheer inertia.

34.╇ During the years of World War II Wittgenstein became friends with Robert H. Thouless (1894–1984), a psychologist and lecturer in education at Cambridge. Thouless attended Wittgenstein’s classes from 1940 to 1945. On February 28, 1941, Thouless gave a talk to the Cambridge Moral Science Club. The talk was entitled “Evidence for Clairvoyance and Telepathy,” and Wittgenstein was in the chair for the talk. Thouless is naturally “sceptical” of claims for telepathy, but he wants to approach the question as a scientist, and is now “quite convinced” by “[J. B.] Rhine’s experiments at Duke University” on people guessing cards hidden in envelopes where “out of hundreds of thousands of such cases a substantially greater proportion of successful ‘guesses’ were found than could reasonably be expected by ‘chance.’” What is interesting is his rationale for taking this seriously in spite of the lack of mediative mechanisms (Thouless, minutes taken by Timothy Moore): He began by saying his sympathies were with those who found such a thing as Extra-Sensory Perception incredible, because it conflicted with the very fruitful set of scientific principles as to what kind of things can happen & what can’t— . . . The fundamental principle, he said, was that any pair of causally connected events must be connected by a series of events continuous in Space and in Time, and wherever in the past it had appeared to have been contradicted, its assumption had always been found to be correct. . . . But nowadays, he explained, scientists were prepared to admit that a principle which had proved correct in 99% of the cases might nevertheless not apply to the remaining 1%: many people asserted, e.g., that electrons did not follow the principle of universal causation; and so the phenomena of Extra-Sensory Perception might be the 1% of cases where the principle of spatio-temporal causal continuity didn’t apply.

The minutes end with the cryptic “A discussion followed.” So we do not have evidence for Wittgenstein’s response to this, but for four months that summer Wittgenstein met with Thouless (and the biologist C. H. Waddington) for weekly conversations. They never discussed this issue in Thouless’s notes of these conversations (“Discussions between Wittgenstein, Waddington, and Thouless,” 381–396), but it seems likely that Wittgenstein found Thouless to be a sympathetic discussion partner. Thouless concluded his remarks to the Moral Science Club in this vein: “He concluded that the fact of Extra-Sensory Perception must make a fundamental revolution in scientific principles, and suggested that perhaps after all we had free-will, although it conflicted with the principles of causal continuity, adding that he wished he knew how to experiment on this.” The supposed reality of ESP without a mediative mechanism is parallel to the possibility of Wittgenstein’s seeds. The temptations brought out by his imaginary seeds are the very ones brought out by ESP. And Thouless’s willingness to resist

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those temptations is just the attitude that Wittgenstein was advocating in regard to the seeds. “If this upsets our concepts of causality, then it is high time they were upset.” As a matter of fact, Rhine’s work was never duplicated, though he himself was not considered fraudulent. His work is discussed by Martin Gardner (“ESP and PK”), who attributes his results to fallacies of statistical interpretation, and naïveté about experimental design. But just as with the seeds, the interest of the case, from Wittgenstein’s point of view, is not whether such things exist, but what we learn about ourselves from the contemplation of such cases. 35.╇ Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, 129. For a valiant attempt to consider how things (would) look in light of quantum mechanics, and other recent scientific advances, see Suppes, Probabilistic Metaphysics. 36.╇ McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 34–35. In 1931, when Wittgenstein set down a list (C&V, 19/16, quoted in chapter 2) of the people who influenced his thinking— Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, and Sraffa—Goethe’s name was conspicuously absent. In a recent paper (“The Puzzle of Goethe’s Influence on Wittgenstein”) I try to explain this absence. We might say that Spengler’s name serves as a proxy for Goethe’s. As Spengler announces (The Decline of the West, v. 1, 49n.): “The philosophy of this book I owe to the philosophy of Goethe.” 37.╇ Spengler writes (The Decline of the West, v. 1, 353): Culture and Civilization—the living body of the soul and the mummy of it. For Western existence the distinction lies at about 1800—on the one side of that frontier life in the fullness and sureness of itself, formed by growth from within, in one great uninterrupted evolution from Gothic childhood to Goethe and Napoleon, and on the other the autumnal, artificial rootless life of our great cities, under forms fashioned by the intellect. Culture and Civilization—the organism born of Mother earth, and the mechanism proceeding from hardened fabric.

Spengler often referred to the modern Western-European era as “Faustian,” associating the Faust of the First Part with Western culture, and the Faust of the Second Part with Western civilization (v. 1, 354). 38.╇ Ibid., 156; citing Goethe, “Maxims and Reflections,” 307. Here we find Spengler placing Marx on the civilization side of the contrast. 39.╇ Goethe, “Theory of Color,” 158. 40.╇ Ibid., 276. 41.╇ Goethe, “Maxims and Reflections,” 309. 42.╇ See Goethe, “The Metamorphosis of Plants,” 89 (“double poppies”), 93 (“proliferated rose”). 43.╇ Goethe, “Parabasis,” 272.

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44.╇ Spengler, The Decline of the West, v. 1, 425. 45.╇ Wittgenstein’s critique of our concepts of causality was as anachronistic as a Marxist who claimed, from a moral point of view, that it was high time for capitalism to pass, but realized, from a material point of view, that it had not yet exhausted the prospects for developing the forces of production.

9â•… Science and the Mind 1.╇ For example, Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, 43–47; and Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy, 395–400. 2.╇ I have a bad habit of watching televangelists late at night. Some insist that the end of the world is not far off. Such predictions were especially prevalent in the late 1990s as the new millennium approached, but they had been around for years before that, and they continue even now. Dr. Jack Van Impe is always talking about how the end is coming soon. I had occasion to watch him on an “OTGH Pulpit Classics” recently—Old Time Gospel Hour church services replayed on the late Jerry Falwell’s television station in Lynchburg, Virginia. This was a sermon by Van Impe from 1974. It was amusing to see how all the signs of those times pointed to a “soon” end then. I have yet to hear his advertised 1973 eight-track tape “The Coming War with Russia.” Another entry for Wittgenstein’s philosophy book consisting entirely of jokes: Jones says to Smith: I’ll give you ten dollars tomorrow. The next day Smith asks for his money, and Jones replies: I told you, I’ll give it to you tomorrow. Cf. also the White Queen to Alice (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, ch. 5): “The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.” The religious prophets are understandably reluctant to specify a date for the end. But cerebral prophets are not all so reticent. In 1984, when I was teaching at the University of California at San Diego, Paul Churchland gave a talk on his work on neuroscience and the philosophy of mind. He was arguing for his “eliminativist” view of mental concepts, and during the question-and-answer session he proclaimed that within twenty years neuroscience would have so revolutionized our understanding of the mind–brain that we would no longer use many of the mental concepts to which we had grown accustomed. (But I don’t believe he’s ever committed himself to a date in print.) 3.╇ For a different view, however, see Horgan and Woodward, “Folk Psychology Is Here to Stay,” who argue that folk psychology can successfully compete with neuroscience on its own terms as a science of human behavior. The concession I make in the text is only for the sake of focusing attention on what I take to be a more important issue. 4.╇ For a fuller discussion of the issue, without reference to Wittgenstein, see Klagge, “Eliminativism and the Mental.”

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5.╇ See also, PI, Part II, §xiv; and RPP1, §1039. 6.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 48. 7.╇ Some other purposes of our ordinary concepts of disease include excusing oneself (“I missed class because I had the flu”) and implying the presence of hidden symptoms, in addition to the obvious ones. 8.╇ Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 154. 9.╇ Rhees, “Editorial Notes,” 223. 10.╇ Stanley Reiser, Medicine and the Reign of Technology, has traced the history of the influence of technological and scientific medicine on patient care. He warns against many aspects of this trend. For a view of medicine that is sensitive to these kinds of concerns, see the essays by Stanley Hauerwas in Suffering Presence. 11.╇ It is helpful to read Wittgenstein’s “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” in this light. Magic and ritual are not, or not only, primitive attempts at predicting and controlling nature. They also serve other purposes. Wittgenstein’s main criticism of Frazer is that he does not comprehend these other purposes. 12.╇ Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, 46. 13.╇ That the functions of folk psychology go beyond the functions of science is a point that has been made by a number of authors. Just to take one: Kathleen Wilkes (“Functionalism, Psychology, and the Philosophy of Mind,” 149): “The conceptual apparatus of common-sense psychology stands to that of scientific psychology as a multi-purpose tool stands to a spanner.” Wittgenstein could have said the same thing. This same point is made in a rather different way by Wilfrid Sellars (“Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” section VII). He claims that the conceptual framework of persons that is embedded in the manifest image of man must be joined to the scientific image of man to preserve the notion of living one’s life. 14.╇ A similar argument could be constructed for other central folk-psychological concepts such as belief and desire. Dennett’s view (in, e.g., “Mechanism and Responsibility”) is that folk psychology embodies the “intentional stance” toward operative systems. 15.╇ We will see later that this may not be true, but it is a position he asserts here. 16.╇ Adkins (From the One to the Many, ch. 2) has surveyed the many respects in which the Homeric Greeks did not have our folk psychology or, indeed, the folk psychology of the classical Greeks. His investigation (15) “reveals a psychological landscape quite different from our own. We are accustomed to emphasize the ‘I’ which ‘takes decisions,’ and such ideas as ‘will’ or ‘intention.’ In Homer, there is much less emphasis on the ‘I,’ or decisions.” Whether we agree with his take on

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Homer’s psychology, it is important to consider that what may seem unavoidable to us now may not have been, and may not be, inevitable. 17.╇ Dennett, “Mechanism and Responsibility,” 254; and Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, 242. 18.╇ Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book III, lines 894–903. 19.╇ Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, 246; Churchland, Neurophilosophy, 481. 20.╇ See C&V, 18/26 (November 22, 1931). What Wittgenstein seems especially to value is the articulation of new perspectives on familiar matters. It is in this sense that he admires the work of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud. This is consistent, however, with Wittgenstein’s thinking that some points of view are potentially dangerous. See C&V, 34/40 (1939), and especially Wittgenstein’s letter to Malcolm (December 6, 1945; Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 101): Unless you think very clearly psycho-analysis is a dangerous and a foul practice, and it’s done no end of harm and, comparatively little good. . . . All of this, of course, doesn’t detract from Freud’s extraordinary scientific achievement. Only, extraordinary scientific achievements have a way, these days, of being used for the destruction of human beings. (I mean their bodies, or their souls, or their intelligence). So hold onto your brains.

These sentiments might be appropriate for Wittgenstein’s misgivings about neuroscience as well. 21.╇ Eliminativists do admit the dangers of abuse of knowledge, but that is not my concern here. In another context, however, see Stich (“Forbidden Knowledge,” section 11). For something on Wittgenstein’s attitude toward the dangers of misuse of science, see his puzzling remark on the atomic bomb (1946; C&V, 48–9/55–56). Cf. also Britton, “Portrait of a Philosopher,” 209. 22.╇ First two quoted phrases from Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, 246; third phrase from Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy, 399. All italics added. 23.╇ Rhees, “Postscript,” 201. 24.╇ Cherniak, “The Riddle of the Universe and Its Solution,” 269ff. 25.╇ Klagge, “The Good Old Days,” 97ff. 26.╇ Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 549. 27.╇ The moral problem of risk from scientific research is investigated in another context by Stich in “The Recombinant DNA Debate.” 28.╇ This evaluation is simplistic because, among other things, it does not consider the fact that neuroscientific research is gradual, and its effects on folk psychology will not be sudden. Dennett has articulated some concerns about a gradual slide from the intentional stance (“Mechanism and Responsibility,” 255).

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29.╇ For instance, Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy, 482. 30.╇ Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 152. See also Oliver Sacks, Awakenings, 280, 285–287. 31.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, 242. 32.╇ Although incompatibilism has mainly seemed to be a threat from science to ordinary concepts, it has not always seemed that way. Shortly after the publication of Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, in 1900, in which Dorothy is carried away from Kansas by a “cyclone” to the Land of Oz, Willis L. Moore, chief of the United States Weather Bureau, sent the following letter to the publisher of the book, George M. Hill & Co. (Baum, The Annotated Wizard of Oz, 23): When I consider the circulation it must have, I regret that the term “cyclone” was used when the term “tornado” was meant. I have been laboring earnestly to correct the improper use of these words. [He goes on to explain the difference.] The author is not to blame for this mistake, for the public has usually insisted upon an improper use of these terms to such an extent that I fear scientists will be compelled to change their nomenclature. If your little book had used the correct word it would have been of considerable assistance to science, instead of perpetuating an unfortunate error.

Speaking on behalf of the publisher, Frank K. Reilly promised Professor Willis that the mistake would be changed in the next edition, but it never was. In fact the conceptual confusion continued, as Willis feared. In November 1929, the Carter Family recorded a song “The Cyclone of Rye Cove,” commemorating the destruction in Scott County, Virginia, caused by a tornado on May 2, 1929. In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, the meteorological event was renamed a “twister”—an ordinary term more closely associated with “tornado.” Whereas Willis feared the scientists would “be compelled to change their nomenclature,” the case turned out to be more an illustration of compatibilism. 33.╇ Brian Greene, a contemporary physicist, uneasily accepts a form of compatibilism, if only temporarily (“The Time We Thought We Knew”): modern physics’ notion of time is clearly at odds with the one most of us have internalized. Einstein greeted the failure of science to confirm the familiar experience of time with “painful but inevitable resignation.” The developments since his era have only widened the disparity between common experience and scientific knowledge. Most physicists cope with this disparity by compartmentalizing: there’s time as understood scientifically, and then there’s time as experienced intuitively. For decades, I’ve struggled to bring my experience closer to my understanding.

Thomas Nagel (“Brain Bisection,” 148) anticipates the same sort of compartmentalizing when it comes to the interpretation of split-brain research: it is not clear what one should do about central features of the mentalistic idea of persons which resist assimilation to an understanding of human beings as physical systems. It may be true of some of these features that we can neither find an objective basis for them, nor give them up. It may be impossible for us to abandon certain ways of conceiving and representing ourselves, no matter how little support they get from scientific research.

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But Nagel seems to accept this with a bit more equanimity. 34.╇ This kind of compatibilism may be what Kant offers, in section 3 of the Groundwork, as a way of reconciling rational autonomy with science. It also seems to be what Sellars hopes for at the end of “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.” 35.╇ Freud’s notion of the unconscious, which, like neuroscience, was offered as a competing model for the explanation of behavior, has been smoothly assimilated into folk psychology—a fact exploited by Horgan and Woodward in their defense of folk psychology. This is doubtless partly owing to the fact that Freud employed the very concepts of folk psychology, belief and desire, while stretching them—some would say beyond recognition. See Wittgenstein’s comments on Freud’s (mis)use of the concepts of “wish-fulfillment” and “representation” (1944; C&V, 44/50). 36.╇ See Dennett, “Mechanism and Responsibility,” 254. 37.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 18.

10â•… Das erlösende Wort 1.╇ Wittgenstein apparently used both the authorized version of the Bible, an English translation also known as the King James Version, and Luther’s German translation. Drury reports a conversation with Wittgenstein in 1939 (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 143): “On the whole I prefer the English Authorized Version of the Bible to Luther’s translation into German. The English translators had such reverence for the text that when they couldn’t make sense of it they were content to leave it unintelligible. But Luther sometimes twists the sense to suit his own ideas.” 2.╇ Goethe’s poetic version of “The Metamorphosis of Plants” includes the phrase (148) “das lösende Wort.” 3.╇ “Letters to Ludwig von Ficker,” 94–95 (probably 1919), and often quoted. 4.╇ Wiener Ausgabe, v. 1, 176; Wiener Ausgabe, v. 2, 68. Nedo translates das erlösende Wort as (Nedo, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Introduction, 7) “the word that breaks the spell.” 5.╇ Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, 77 (January 2, 1930). Schulte and McGuinness translate erlösende as “liberating.” 6.╇ Wiener Ausgabe, v. 3, 156–157. 7.╇ Big Typescript, 302 (relevant portions also in “Philosophy,” 165), where Luckhardt and Aue also translate erlösende as “liberating.” 8.╇ “Discussions between Wittgenstein, Waddington, and Thouless,” 382 (quoted previously in chapter 3). 9.╇ Geach’s notes in Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 90; then Edwards’s unpublished version in “Wittgenstein’s Lectures,” 128–129. Malcolm, presumably reporting on the same lecture, writes (Dreaming, 87): “In a lecture Witt-

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genstein once said that it is an important thing in philosophy to know when to stop.” 10.╇ “The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience,” 355 (lecture on May 20, 1936). 11.╇ Consider also (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, 333): “Our disease is one of wanting to explain.” 12.╇ Though it may seem unnatural to suppress the urge to ask “why?,” it is worth remembering that we engage in this sort of suppression ourselves when we deal with two-year-olds. While two-year-olds may suffer from the delusion that everything can be explained, the more pressing problem is that they push the request for explanation or justification too far—too far, that is, given the temperament of their parents. More patient parents may be willing to engage in the explanation game longer than impatient parents, but sooner or later parents reach the point of saying “That’s just how it is,” or “Because I said so.” Here we are teaching our children to know when to stop, to rest content with things at a certain point. Accepting this is an important step in maturation. Drury relates the following anecdote (Danger of Words, xi): At one time I told Wittgenstein of an incident that seemed to interest and please him. It was when I was having my oral exam in physiology. The examiner said to me: “Sir Arthur Keith once remarked to me that the reason why the spleen drained into the portal system was of the greatest importance; but he never told me what that importance was, now can you tell me?” I had to confess that I couldn’t see any anatomical or physiological significance in this fact. The examiner then went on to say: “Do you think there must be a significance, an explanation? As I see it there are two sorts of people: one man sees a bird sitting on a telegraph wire and says to himself ‘Why is that bird sitting just there?,’ the other man replies ‘Damn it all, the bird has to sit somewhere.’”

In a conversation with Rhees, Wittgenstein says (Wittgenstein’s Conversations with Rush Rhees, September 8, 1945): “We have to refrain from asking ‘why?’. . . .‘Everything must have a function.’ This is not plain at all. . . . One can in fact show that not everything can have a function. We may talk about blood and the composition of blood. As a result of that composition, blood has a certain colour and smell. But then that colour does not have a function. . . . Knowing where to stop. Not assuming it must go further.” 13.╇ MS 124, 218; and also MS 179, 3v; both from the mid-1940s. 14.╇ Much later (April 13–14, 1947: C&V, 69–70) he returns to this issue: “In the way in which asking a question, insisting on an answer, or not asking it, expresses a different attitude, so too, in this sense, an utterance like ‘It’s God’s will’ or ‘We are not masters of our fate.’ What this sentence does, or at least something similar, a commandment too could do.” 15.╇ Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, 115.

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16.╇ See also “Movements of Thought,” 83 (May 6, 1931): “‘It is good because God commanded it’ is the right expression for the lack of reason [Grundlosigkeit—absence of justification].” 17.╇ Recorded by Waismann in Voices of Wittgenstein, 33. Quoted previously in chapter 2. 18.╇ Wittgenstein never discusses the book of Job, but he does mention it once in his writing, indicating his familiarity with it. On January 2, 1948 (MS 136, 47b), he is writing about the importance of circumstances or context for our understanding of concepts. If the circumstances were quite different, the concept might not “work here any longer.” And then he adds, parenthetically: “Just as in a situation in which the hippo [Nilpferd] and the crocodile [Krokodil] have been created, moral concepts can no longer be used. Job [Hiob].” In God’s answer to Job, in chapter 40, he mentions the Behemoth (40:15) and the Leviathan (40:25 & cf. 3:8). These are traditionally understood to be huge wild creatures, beyond our control. The details suggest the first is a kind of hippo, the second a sort of crocodile. Luther’s German translation gives these suggestions in footnotes. The point is that in a dangerous world that resembles, say, Hobbes’s state of nature, our ordinary moral concepts, such as kindness or justice, could no longer be used. 19.╇ In my discussion of Job I use not only the King James Version—which has problems with both editing and translation—but also the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB). In fact text and translation are especially problematic in Job. But this is not a work of biblical scholarship. My concern is not to provide an exegesis, or to show exactly what points Wittgenstein may have seen in the story, but rather to show how elements of the story fit on a trajectory that helps us to place Wittgenstein’s thought. As it happens, Father Anthony Kenny, later a Wittgenstein scholar and now a trustee, was responsible for the translation of the Book of Job in the New Jerusalem Bible (Kenny, A Path from Rome, 117ff.). 20.╇ Such a trial was witnessed in Auschwitz by Elie Wiesel. He wrote a play based on this, but set in seventeenth-century Ukraine following a pogrom—The Trial of God. 21.╇ Newsome, “The Book of Job,” 422. 22.╇ Another joke for Wittgenstein’s “good philosophical work”: A congregant complains to his rabbi that every time he asks a question, the rabbi responds with another question. “Why do you do that?” asks the congregant. The rabbi responds, “You have a problem with that?” 23.╇ Wittgenstein writes (April 13–14, 1947; C&V, 61/69): “If something unwelcome happens:—do we ask ‘Who’s to blame?,’ do we say ‘Someone must be to blame for it’?,—or do we say ‘It was God’s will,’ ‘It was fate’?” 24.╇ Newsome, “The Book of Job,” 625, 630–631. 25.╇ Scherer, “The Book of Job: Exposition,” 1192–1193.

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26.╇ Although Wittgenstein did not discuss Job, he did discuss human suffering in similar terms. In a conversation in 1951 with his friend Drury, the last conversation they had, Drury (“Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 169–170) mentioned some passages in the Old Testament that I find very offensive. For instance the story [2 Kings 2:23-4] where some children mock of Elisha for his baldness: “Go up, thou bald head.” And God sends bears out of the forest to eat them. Wittgenstein:â•… (very sternly) You mustn’t pick and choose just what you want in that way. Drury:â•… But I have never been able to do anything else.

Here Drury endorses and Wittgenstein rejects a moralistic understanding of God. Drury only focuses on the passages that fit his moralistic conceptions, where Wittgenstein rejects the application of moralistic conceptions. Wittgenstein: Just remember what the Old Testament meant to a man like Kierkegaard. After all, children have been killed by bears. Drury: Yes, but . . . ought [we] to think that such a tragedy is a direct punishment from God for a particular act of wickedness: In the New Testament we are told the precise opposite—the men on whom the Tower of Siloam fell were not more wicked than anyone else [Luke 13:4–5].

So said Jesus, defending God against the charge of injustice. Wittgenstein:â•… That has nothing to do with what I am talking about. You don’t understand, you are quite out of your depth.

Wittgenstein (“you are quite out of your depth”) sounds much like the voice of God out of the whirlwind in Job. There is no moral meaning of suffering, either for humans or for God. Stop searching for such explanations. Wittgenstein later said: “I must write you a letter about that.” But he never did. 27.╇ Another story about the possible meaning of human suffering is Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1): “Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” Readers and scholars alike (Heller, “Man Guilty”) look for what Josef K. has done that would justify his suffering: original sin, pride, mistreating women, jumping to conclusions, etc. But this is because of a desire to see things as making sense—something must explain his suffering. I believe Kafka’s point is to present us with a world that does not make sense in this way. We are told from the beginning that he has done nothing wrong, and yet all of this happens to him. Suffering sometimes has no meaning, in the sense of justification or explanation. Kafka’s story, I believe, stymies our attempt to find it. And, unlike the “happy” ending of Job, this story ends with Josef K.’s execution. 28.╇ Biblical scholars note that the language of God from the whirlwind is poetic, unlike the prosaic language of God in the framing passages (Balentine, Job, 630–631). This not only provides a basis for distinguishing between two “characters,” but also confirms Wittgenstein’s thought that philosophy (in this case the erlösende word) should be written as poetry.

Notes to Pages 136–139╆

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29.╇ Quoted in McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 235. Wittgenstein in fact refers to Dostoevsky in his notebook (July 6, 1916; NB, 73). 30.╇ Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations,” 86; and also “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 102, 108. 31.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 11. In the mid-1930s, when Wittgenstein studied Russian, one reason (Redpath, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Student’s Memoir, 28) was that “he was intent on being able to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the original.” 32.╇ The Brothers Karamazov, 224. 33.╇ “Dostoevsky’s Letters,” 758 (May 10, 1879). 34.╇ See Rosen, “Style and Structure,” 844. 35.╇ “Dostoevsky’s Letters,” 761–762 (August 24, 1879). 36.╇ This is well explained in Rosen, “Style and Structure.” 37.╇ The Brothers Karamazov, 270–271. 38.╇ Ibid., 271. 39.╇ Wittgenstein once wrote (January 31, 1931; Weiner Ausgabe, vol. 3, 172), alluding to a German proverb: “I could choose as a motto for my book: A fool can ask more than ten wise people can answer. In fact here it ought to be ‘ten clever people.’” The proverb generally marshals only seven wise people. 40.╇ “Letters to von Ficker,” 91 (July 24, 1915). Gillette translates erlösende as “saving.” Wittgenstein is responding to a letter (July 11, 1915; Briefwechsel 1909– 1967: Band 2, 1914–1925) in which von Ficker, who was called up to the army in February 1915, describes his desolate situation in the war, which he does not know how to endure any longer. 41.╇ In Engelmann’s memoir of Wittgenstein he quotes one of Tolstoy’s tales beloved by Wittgenstein, “Two Old Men,” in which inquiry that goes too far is quieted with the response (Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein: With a Memoir, 81): “That is God’s business, my friend, God’s business.” 42.╇ Quoted in CL, 140 (December 20, 1919). 43.╇ Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations,” 79; and also “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 160. 44.╇ Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 104–105. Also, Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 11 (August 5, 1949); and Leavis, “Memories of Wittgenstein,” 66. 45.╇ Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveler, 218–219, 221, 228.

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46.╇ Wittgenstein in Cambridge, 371. Also, Bouwsma reports (August 5, 1949; Wittgenstein: Conversations, 11): “He had also read a history of the Mormons—Edward Meier.” 47.╇ “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” 129. Eliminative materialists do this to folk psychology when they take it to be false primitive science. 48.╇ Ibid., 119. 49.╇ “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 127. 50.╇ Renan, History of the People of Israel, vol. 1, 22, 27. 51.╇ Ibid., 34. 52.╇ Ibid., 7–8, 12. 53.╇ Ibid., 41, 50, 86. 54.╇ Ibid., xxiv. 55.╇ Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 161. 56.╇ Meyer, The Origin and History of the Mormons, i, v. 57.╇ Ibid., 15. 58.╇ Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 11. Another favorite comparison in Wittgenstein. 59.╇ Balentine (Job, 700–703) examines the question whether Job is supposed to have reached a state of “moral indifference” (701). 60.╇ “Philosophy,” 161. And also Easter term, 1931, student’s notes (Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1932, 63): “Doing philosophy may perhaps mean resignation of temperament but never of intellect.” 61.╇ But does someone who lacks the need really see the point? Doesn’t the question practically ask itself? 62.╇ “Lecture on Ethics,” 41–42. An earlier draft (MS 139a, 15) reads: “we are safe under God’s protection.” There is a story behind this experience that Wittgenstein describes. From a conversation with Malcolm (Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 58): He told me that in his youth he had been contemptuous of [religion], but that at about the age of twenty-one something had caused a change in him. In Vienna he saw a play that was a mediocre drama, but in it one of the characters expressed the thought that no matter what happened in the world, nothing bad could happen to him—he was independent of fate and circumstances. Wittgenstein was struck by this stoic thought; for the first time he saw the possibility of religion.

(See also the briefer account in Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 46.)

Notes to Pages 142–148╆

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The details of this play and its influence in Vienna at the time (November 1909) are spelled out in Janik and Veigl (Wittgenstein in Vienna, 162–164). The line from the play Die Kreuzelschreiber, by Ludwig Anzengruber, is (translated as): “Nothin’ kin happ’n ta ya!”

11â•… Wittgenstein in the Twenty-First Century 1.╇ Kenny, Wittgenstein, xii. 2.╇ Ibid., xiii, xiv. Consider also Hacker (Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-Century Philosophy, 136), who wrote in 1996: The Investigations was immediately hailed as a work of genius. It stimulated a flood of writing as philosophers struggled to come to grips with its ideas. It had a very great impact on analytical philosophy for the next quarter century. It put new themes on the philosophical agenda, and revitalized old ones. For a while, at least, it held a variety of philosophical diseases at bay—until they erupted again in new, virulent forms. But it was also widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. These misinterpretations often gave rise to further philosophical theories, defended in Wittgenstein’s name but inimical to his work. And, as Wittgenstein knew, his philosophy was not in tune with the spirit of the late twentieth century, with its narrow, monistic conception of understanding modeled upon scientific understanding, its craving for explanatory theories and its intoxication with scientific progress. If, for a while, the Investigations directed the stream of analytic philosophy into fresh channels, it is also true that twenty years later the flow had begun to lose the momentum Wittgenstein had given it, and in the 1970s and 1980s the waters became increasingly muddied with the silt of misunderstood science and misconceived scientism.

3.╇ See also the comments by Leavis, “Memories of Wittgenstein,” 62–63. 4.╇ Perhaps what Wittgenstein sought was best expressed when he warned himself at the beginning of his military service (August 10, 1914; GT, 14; quoted previously in chapter 5): “Need a great deal of high spirits and philosophy to get used to things here.” And only ten weeks later, after he learned that his brother Paul, a professional pianist, had lost his right arm in battle (October 28; GT, 35): “What sort of philosophy would be needed to get over this!” He didn’t use the term “philosophy” in this sense in his other writings, but perhaps it expresses the state of finding the erlösende word. That is the “quite different artillery” that Wittgenstein was seeking—artillery that would make “all these questions superfluous.” 5.╇ See Rosch, “Principles of Categorization,” 36; Rosch and Mervis, “Family Resemblances,” 574. 6.╇ See, e.g., Zadeh, “Fuzzy Sets.” I do not wish to imply that Wittgenstein would endorse these kinds of formalizations of his work. 7.╇ Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning,’” 222. 8.╇ Well, no one but the Scarecrow, from the Wizard of Oz (chapter 17, The Annotated Wizard of Oz, 285): “The Scarecrow told them there were wonderful thoughts in his

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head; but he would not say what they were because he knew no one could understand them but himself.” And we might say that for certain pietistic forms of Christianity, belief in God, or faith in Jesus, has become so private that only you know, or only you and God know, whether you really have it. In fact, much anxiety can be expended over not even being able to introspect for oneself whether one really has faith. This approach assimilates propositional attitudes to experiences, and then treats the experience as an object so fully that it may not even be introspectible. From “only I can know whether I am in pain” we move to “only I can know whether I have faith” and then to “only God can know whether I have faith.” The twentieth-century monk, Thomas Merton, writes (Life and Holiness, 56): “The most important, the most real, and lasting work of the Christian is accomplished in the depths of his own soul. It cannot be seen by anyone, even by himself. It is known only to God. This work is not so much a matter of fidelity to visible and general standards, as of faith.” 9.╇ See Klagge, “An Unexplored Concept in Wittgenstein.” 10.╇ Quine, “Facts of the Matter,” 162–166. 11.╇ See, e.g., essays by Kim, “Concepts of Supervenience,” and by Klagge, “Supervenience: Model Theory or Metaphysics.” 12.╇ Supervenience is a modal claim that asserts a necessary relationship between two realms. Although Wittgenstein’s reflections on seeds do not (I have claimed) assert an actuality—two indiscernible seeds that produce different plants—they assert a possibility, which would undermine the claimed necessity. 13.╇ Stich, “Group Portrait of the Mind,” 374. Wittgenstein’s reluctance to accept presentist materialism is analogous to his discussion of action at a distance (“Cause and Effect,” 411), which is a rejection of what we might call localist materialism: “There is something like action at a distance here.” Wittgenstein’s version of the twin-earth cases, which are time-slices, emphasizes the rejection of presentism, whereas Putnam’s version emphasizes the rejection of localism. In both cases, meaning is not in the head—now (Wittgenstein), or here (Putnam). Yet both maintain that there are material differences. The oddity of Wittgenstein’s view comes from the fact that “There is a difference, only not here” slides off the tongue more easily than “There is a difference, only not now.” 14.╇ Wittgenstein’s constitutivism is a kind of multiple realizability, but whereas multiple realizability generally holds that it is various brain states that realize some mental state, Wittgenstein is not taking brain states as the base, but various behaviors or even dispositions in various circumstances. And although his constitutivism is analogous to a token-identity theory, he is not asserting identity, but rather asserting the relation of consisting in—or realization. (Although some may fear the ascription of an “-ism” to Wittgenstein, “constitutivism” is no more of an “-ism” than is “compatibilism” between free will and determinism).

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15.╇ Kim, “The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism,” 267. 16.╇ Ibid., 281. 17.╇ However, Karl Popper, Wittgenstein’s old nemesis, tentatively endorsed the idea that freedom of the will comes in through the quantum indeterminacy in the brain (Popper and Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, 539–540). In some sense the mind selects an outcome that is allowed but not determined by the brain. This is the revival of an idea that should have died with Lucretius (On the Nature of Things, Book II, lines 244–293). 18.╇ Although my picture of Wittgenstein suggests that he be seen as resisting a modern temperament in favor of an older one, this picture may seem less than clear in some cases, as indeed it is. In this case Kim represents a mechanistic temperament that Wittgenstein resists, but quantum mechanics and action at a distance also run counter to this mechanistic temperament. Which, then, represents “our” contemporary temperament that Wittgenstein is resisting? There is no single, simple answer to that question. I would suggest, however, that our culture (or rather, our contemporary civilization) is more deeply imbued with the mechanistic temperament. For more on this, see Suppes, Probabilistic Metaphysics. 19.╇ Nisbett and Wilson, “Telling More Than We Can Know,” 243–244. 20.╇ Ibid., 232. 21.╇ Nagel, “The Absurd,” 14–15. 22.╇ Ibid., 13, 17, 21. 23.╇ Consider Euthyphro, 15e: “Some other time, Socrates, for I am in a hurry now and it is time to go.” Protagoras, 361e: “We will examine these things later, whenever you wish; now it is time to turn our attention elsewhere.” Republic, 331d, where Cephalus bows out: “I’ll hand over the argument to you, as I have to look after the sacrifice,” even though he had just come from the sacrifice (328c). And the Symposium, 223d, where Socrates drinks all his companions under the table and then goes off to spend the rest of the day “just as he always did.” In this respect Wittgenstein was not unlike Socrates. As Russell recalled their early discussions (Autobiography, v. 2, 137): “He used to come to see me every evening at midnight, and pace up and down my room like a wild beast for three hours in agitated silence. . . . I did not like to suggest to him that it was time for bed.” 24.╇ Lewis, “Scorekeeping in a Language Game,” 245. 25.╇ Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 254. 26.╇ Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 90 (quoted previously). 27.╇ Lewis, “Scorekeeping in a Language Game,” 246. 28.╇ Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning,’” 227.

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29.╇ Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein: With a Memoir, 57. 30.╇ See Rogers, “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Methods,” for a careful account. 31.╇ Quoted in Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 81. 32.╇ Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 579. 33.╇ Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 81, 84. 34.╇ John, “Wittgenstein’s Wonderful Life,” 510. 35.╇ Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations,” 85, and “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” 155, reports on Wittgenstein reading Boswell. 36.╇ “A Lecture on Ethics,” 41. 37.╇ Wittgenstein’s claim that “Science is a way of sending [man] to sleep again” should not go unquestioned. What he must mean is “science” in the sense of a settled account of everything (cf. TLP, 4.11: “The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science.”). But of course science can also mean the unending pursuit of such an account, which is far from sleep-inducing. As Walter Isaacson put it, in his recent biography of Einstein (Einstein, 6): “an appreciation for the glories of science is a joyful trait. . . . It helps us remain in touch with that childlike capacity for wonder . . . that characterizes Einstein and other great theoretical physicists”— and Wittgenstein.

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Index

Action at a distance, 103, 105, 196n19, 198n24, 214n13, 215n18 Adkins, A. W. H., 204n16 Agency, agent, 117–119, 122–123, 207n34 Agree, agreement, 41–42, 174n2 Alegría, Fernando, 53, 179n17 Alien, alienation, 1, 3, 24–25, 56, 61, 70, 72, 74, 78, 83, 153, 168n19. See also Strange, stranger; Fremd, Fremden, Fremder, Fremdling Ambrose, Alice, 91, 163n44 Anscombe, Elizabeth, 12, 125, 143, 156n8, 159n14, 163n44, 169n35, 173n73, 174n3, 180n6, 190n5, 196n16 Aristotle, 53, 188n36 Assimilation to surroundings, 50, 54, 56, 58, 73, 80 Audience, 15–16, 20, 22, 24, 59, 77, 80, 104, 110, 175n6, 188n36, 197n22 anonymous, 15, 17, 163n41, 165n8 Austria, teaching in rural, 1, 7, 70, 136, 156n5, 183n25 Austrian music, 81, 184n5 Austro-Hungarian army, 1, 51, 68, 183n24 Bachtin, Nicholas, 58, 78, 164n46 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 164n46 Balentine, Samuel, 210n28, 212n59 Baranczak, Stanislaw, 58–59, 180n34 Beetle in the box, 33–34

Benjamin, Walter, 53, 179n12 Bible, 72, 137, 207n1, 209n19 Hebrew Bible, 49–50, 53–54, 132, 177n6 Luther’s German Bible, 125, 187n25, 207n1 Boltzmann, Ludwig, 22, 83, 189n1, 202n36 Bouwsma, Oets, 56–57, 78, 100, 116, 123, 156n7, 164n45, 166n13, 179n19, 179n28, 180n20, 188n33, 195n8, 199n27, 204n6, 207n37, 211n31, 211n44, 212n46, 212n58, 212n62 Brain, 84–85, 98–105, 120–121, 148, 150–151, 168n21, 194n24, 195n9, 195n14, 197n21, 198n24, 203n2, 214n14 criteria of mental states, 88, 193n21 in preface to PI, 13, 20, 22, 30 and quantum mechanics, 215n17 split-brain, 206n33 symptoms of mental states, 87 Braithwaite, Richard, 13, 156n4, 161n30, 162n34 Breytenbach, Breyten, 53, 59, 179n13, 180n35 Britten, Karl, 81 Broad, C. D., 164n1 Brouwer, L. E. J., 156n4 Brueggemann, Walter, 54, 73, 179n20, 184n2 Buchanan, Allen, 200n31

240╆

Cambridge, Cambridge University, 1–2, 7, 13–15, 20, 22, 32, 39, 51–52, 54–58, 67, 76, 80, 97, 103, 138, 153, 155n1, 155n3, 156n4, 156n5, 156n6, 163n42, 173n75, 180n34, 181n8, 190n3, 201n34 Cambridge University Moral Science Club, 16, 93, 109, 156n4, 163n42, 176n13, 194n29, 201n34 Carnap, Rudolf, 187n28 Carr, Herbert Wildon, 156n4 Carroll, Lewis, 203n2 Causation, causality, cause, 86, 98– 100, 102–103, 105–111, 113, 123, 148–149, 191n10, 193n23, 195n14, 198n24, 199n28, 201n34, 203n45 (non-)mediative conception of causality, 99, 102–103, 106–111, 113, 149, 151, 195n14, 199n28, 201n34 Cavell, Stanley, 167n19 Chalmers, David, 172n54 Character, 39–40, 43, 69, 74, 130, 168n21, 176n12, 187n30, 188n36, 198n26 Cherniak, Christopher, 120, 205n24 Christian, Christianity, 66–67, 123, 181n19, 214n8 Christian–Marxist dialogue, 65–67, 70, 182n21 Churchland, Patricia, 119, 203n1, 205n19, 205n22, 205n29 Churchland, Paul, 117, 203n1, 203n2, 204n12 Civilization, 23–25, 28–29, 38, 40, 42, 52, 56, 73–74, 78–80, 83, 104–105, 111, 113, 129, 144, 161n17, 188n32, 188n34, 194n31, 197n22, 198n28, 200n31, 202n37, 202n38, 215n18 Civilized, 24, 28–29, 129, 141, 167n19, 184n4 Code, 1, 97, 155n1, 179n25 coded wartime diary, 8, 10, 56, 67–69, 125–126, 130, 155n1, 159n19, 161n26, 182n24, 187n30, 213n4

Index

Cognitive, noncognitive, 28, 32, 36, 40 Cohen, G. A., 200n31 Commitment, 32, 107 Communism, communist, 65–66, 75, 197n22 Community, communal, 42, 49–50, 54, 58, 64–65, 67, 73, 75, 89, 192n20, 200n31 Compatibilism of folk concepts and science, 118, 122–124, 206n32, 206n33, 207n34 Compatibilism of free will and determinism, 195n8, 214n14 Consists in, constitutivism, 30, 38, 41, 148, 173n1, 214n14 Conversion, convert, 62–63, 71 Cornish, Kimberley, 186n21 Cortázar, Julio, 53, 74, 179n14, 185n7 Criteria, criterion, 27, 33, 41, 84, 86, 167n19, 172n50, 191n7 changing criteria, 87–94, 191n16, 193n21 Culture, cultural, cultured, 22–25, 28– 29, 40, 42, 52, 56, 73–74, 76–80, 104, 110–113, 129, 144, 154, 160n26, 166n17, 167n19, 169n25, 173n76, 176n12, 184n4, 184n5, 188n32, 188n34,, 197n22, 200n31, 202n37 and Russia, 76–77, 79 Spengler’s conception of, 23–25, 28– 29, 52, 73–74, 111–112, 202n37 Dark, darkness, 13, 20, 22, 29, 137, 166n10, 167n19 Davidson, Donald, 176n15, 193n22 DeAngelis, William, 167n17 Death, 8, 10, 11, 23, 130, 153 Define, defining, definition, 26–27, 33, 39, 42, 45, 88–89, 103, 106–107, 110, 123, 127–128, 146, 163n40, 168n23, 169n28 of exile, 50–54, 178n9, 178n10 indefinable, 27, 168n24, 169n28

Index╆

of planet, 192n20 of shock, 94 undefined, 66, 168n24, 182n21 Dennett, Daniel, 119, 157n9, 204n14, 205n17, 205n28, 207n36 Dewey, John, 57 Diachronic anthropology, 64–65 Diachronic family resemblance, 89–90 Dickens, Charles, 108, 138, 211n45 Dichten, Dichter, 20–21, 145, 154. See also Poem, poet, poetic, poetry Disagree, disagreement, 28, 174n2 Division of linguistic labor, 152 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 76–77, 108, 135– 138, 141, 164n46, 211n29, 211n31 Drury, Maurice O’Connor, 14, 20, 22, 39, 64, 66, 78, 83, 116, 121, 136, 138–140, 161n1, 165n6, 166n10, 166n11, 166n14, 168n22, 168n23, 173n75, 178n6, 181n13, 186n13, 186n21, 187n29, 189n1, 192n18, 199n27, 204n8, 206n30, 207n1, 208n12, 210n26, 211n30, 211n43, 211n44, 212n55, 216n35 Dublin, Ireland, 2, 51, 77, 186n21 Duck–rabbit figure, 47–49, 177n2 Dyslexia, 168n21 Edwards, Gilbert Harris, 192n17, 196n21, 198n24, 207n9 Einstein, Alfred, 83, 196n19, 206n33, 216n37 Eliminative materialism, eliminativism, eliminativist, 88–92, 115–119, 121, 124, 148, 152, 203n2, 205n21, 212n47 Elster, Jon, 200n31 Engage, engagement, 16, 53, 64–66, 69–71, 182n21 Engelmann, Paul, 12–13, 15, 76–78, 153, 158n9, 158n10, 160n24, 161n27, 173n73, 173n74, 174n3,

241

183n25, 186n15, 186n18, 186n23, 187n27, 187n28, 196n16, 211n41 Erlösende word, 125–130, 134, 137, 141, 151, 207n4, 207n5, 207n7, 210n28, 211n40, 213n4 Essence, 26, 102, 106–109, 131, 167n19, 169n25 Essentialist, essentialism, 26–30, 71, 89, 106–107, 110, 146, 169n25 definition, 39, 42, 50, 127 Eternity, 8, 11 Exile, exiled, 3, 24, 40, 47–50, 67, 73– 81, 110, 119, 152, 167n19, 173n76 definition of, 50–54, 178n9, 178n10 Hebrew concept of, 49–50, 73, 177n5, 181n20, 187n25 as a metaphor, 3, 48–49 Wittgenstein as an, 52–59, 77–78, 97, 129, 176n12, 184n4, 188n34 Explanation, 85, 94–95, 99, 102–103, 108, 111, 117–118, 122, 199n30, 207n35 end of, 127–129, 149–150, 208n12 of goodness, 130–131 and Marx, 199n3 personal, 5, 7, 14, 42, 158n9 primitive, 139–140 of suffering, 133–135, 210n26, 210n27 Family resemblance, 27, 42, 50, 89–90, 106, 146 Fremd, Fremden, Fremder, Fremdling, 1, 24, 56, 78, 175n7, 182n23, 182n29, 184n29. See also Alien, alienation; Strange, stranger Faust, 64, 146, 181n11, 186n25, 202n37 Faustian era, 23, 28–29, 112, 202n37 Feigl, Herbert, 156n4 Feynmann, Richard, 111, 202n35 Ficker, Ludwig von, 6, 10, 126, 137, 159n19, 207n3, 211n40 Findlay, J. N., 81, 189n41 Fly, fly bottle, 37, 38, 129

242╆

Folk psychology, 115, 117–118, 121–124, 203n3, 204n13, 204n14, 204n15, 205n28, 207n35, 212n47 Foreign, 50, 52, 54, 78, 129, 176n14 Form of life, 62–63, 70, 122, 152, 180n6 Frazer, Sir James George, 139–140, 177n6, 204n11 Frege, Gottlob, 6–7, 22, 31, 89, 146, 157n8, 157n8, 157n9, 171n43, 171n50, 181n19, 193n20, 202n36 Freud, Sigmund, 89–90, 182n21, 205n20, 207n35 Game, 26–27, 106, 169n25, 169n27. See also Language game Gardener, 51, 109 Gardner, Martin, 202n34 Gasking, Douglas, 172n62, 185n11 Gass, William, 53, 179n11 Geach, Peter, 191n16, 196n21, 198n24, 207n9 Genesis, book of, 49, 53, 123 Geras, Norman, 197n22 Gibson, Arthur, 179n32 Gilbert, James, 182n21 Glock, Hans Johan, 159n17 God, 49–50, 54, 56, 73, 106, 125, 142, 175n6, 211n41, 212n62, 214n8 and ethics, 131, 209n16 in Job, 132–135, 141, 151, 209n18, 210n28 looking into a mind, 32, 146, 172n50 and suffering, 136, 151, 210n26 in wartime diary, 7–8, 126, 130 will of, 175n6, 208n14, 209n23 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 29, 64, 111–112, 181n11, 184n4, 186n25, 197n22, 202n36, 202n37, 202n38, 202n39, 202n41, 202n42, 202n43, 207n2 Good, goodness, 7, 53, 118, 131, 169n25, 189n36, 209n16 Graßoff, Gerd, 158n9

Index

Greene, Brian, 206n33 Groag, Heini, 78 Grounds, 62–63, 69, 127–128 Hacker, Peter, 101–102, 170n35, 177n1, 185n6, 190n5, 194n6, 195n10, 195n16, 213n2 Hague, The, 7, 158n9 Hahn, Hans, 155n4 Haller, Rudolf, 166n17 Hamilton, Kelly, 189n1 Happiness, happy, 8, 10, 121, 210n27 unhappy, 8, 10, 154 Hare, Richard M., 169n28, 180n4 Hašek, Jaroslav, 182n24 Hauerwas, Stanley, 204n10 Hayek, Friedrich von, 77, 186n24 Hebraic, Hebrew, 49, 125, 140, 177n6 Hertz, Heinrich, 22, 83, 93–94, 194n28, 202n36 Hijab, Wasfi, 61 Hilmy, S. Stephen, 166n17, 195n10 Hintikka, Jaakko, 168n21 Hooker, Richard, 64 Horgan, Terence, 203n3, 207n35 Identity conditions, 33, 84, 89, 171n50 Identity theory, 88–89, 91–92, 116, 193n20 token, 148, 214n14 Idol, idolatry, 81, 83–84. See also Scientism, scientistic Indeterminacy, indeterminism, 103, 105, 110–111, 195n19, 215n17 Insultation thesis (of philosophy from science), 35, 85, 89, 91, 93, 95, 99, 109, 152 strong thesis, 87, 91, 94, 192n17 weak thesis, 87, 91, 93, 192n17 Intellect, 39, 42, 140–142, 153, 174n5, 188n36, 202n37, 205n 20, 212n60 Intellectual, 26, 64, 140, 188n36 difference, 24, 28

Index╆

resignation, 142 Inverted spectrum, 30–33, 36–38, 41– 42, 84–85, 89, 147, 170n36, 193n21 Isaiah, 50, 54, 73, 175n6, 178n8, 187n25, 189n43 Israel, Israelites, 73, 139, 177n6, 187n25 Jackson, A. C., 172n62, 185n11, 191n16, 192n17, 196n21, 197n21, 198n24 Janik, Allan, 160n26, 168n20, 187n28, 213n62 Jarman, Derek, 153 Jeremiah, 50, 177n5, 178n8 Jesus, 11, 81, 137, 144, 174n6, 210n26, 214n8 Jewish, Jews, 49–50, 53–54, 76, 178n6. See also Judaism Wittgenstein classified as, 52 Job, 125, 132–137, 140–142, 151, 209n18, 209n19, 209n21, 209n24, 209n25, 210n26, 210n27, 210n28, 212n59 John, Peter, 154, 216n34 Judaism, 23, 54, 181n20. See also Jewish, Jews Judeans, 50, 73, 178n6 Justification, justify, 34, 38, 86, 90, 147 end of, 38–39, 71, 127–131, 134–135, 149–150, 208n12, 209n16, 210n27 urge for, 150, 210n27 Kafka, Franz, 210n27 Kant, Immanuel, 118, 123, 207n34 Karamazov, Alyosha, 136–138, 141–142, 151 Karamazov, Ivan, 135–137, 141–142, 151 Kenny, Anthony, 143–145, 163n44, 164n1, 177n1, 190n5, 209n19, 213n1 Keynes, John Maynard, 1, 14, 76, 153, 155n2, 155n3, 156n4, 158n9, 161n31

243

Kim, Jaegwon, 148–149, 214n11, 215n15, 215n18 King, John, 185n5 Koder, Rudolf, 13, 161n29 Köhler, Wolfgang, 101–103, 195n11, 195n12, 195n13 Kolak, Daniel, 157n1 Kolakowski, Leszak, 76, 186n12 Kraus, Karl, 22, 78, 187n28, 202n36 Kreisel, Georg, 75 Kripke, Saul, 193n20 Lackey, Douglas, 157n9 Language game, 19, 34–37, 62–64, 66, 70–71, 87, 118, 124, 151–152, 167n19, 180n5 changing, 64, 80, 90, 123 Lewis on, 150 of philosophy, 35–36 Leavis, F. R., 164n47, 185n10, 189n41, 211n44, 213n3 Lee, Desmond, 186n11 Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog, 157n9 Lewis, David, 150–151, 215n24, 215n27 Lewy, Casimir, 172n63 Liberation theology, 65–67 Lion, 44–45, 176n14 Littlewood, J. E., 14, 165n3 Locke, John, 170n36 Loos, Adolf, 22, 78, 187n28, 202n36 Lord’s Prayer, 11 Luckhardt, Grant, 163n44, 207n7 Lucretius, 119, 205n18, 215n17 Lurie, Yuval, 166n17, 184n5 Macdonald, Margaret, 171n40 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 167n19 Mahler, Gustav, 184n5 Malcolm, Norman, 20, 39–40, 42, 56, 70, 153–154, 165n4, 172n62, 173n72, 176n13, 177n1, 179n26, 183n27, 191n12, 199n29, 205n20, 207n9, 212n62, 216n31, 216n33

244╆

Maxwell, James Clerk, 84, 202n33 Marx, Karl, 66, 112, 181n17, 188n32, 197n22, 199n31, 202n38 Marxism, Marxist, 64–67, 70, 182n21, 203n45. See also Christian–Marxist dialogue McCarthy, Mary, 53, 57, 178n9, 179n29 McGinn, Colin, 191n11, 191n13 McGuinness, Brian, 69, 111, 157n1, 160n21, 160n23, 166n13, 183n26, 202n36, 207n5 Mechanism, 1, 109–110, 112, 119, 122, 149, 151, 195n14, 196n17, 200n31, 201n33, 201n34 and civilization, 23, 111, 202n37 Medicine, 79, 83, 116–117, 122, 139, 186n21, 204n10 Mein, Andrew, 184n1 Menger, Karl, 156n4 Merton, Thomas, 214n8 Metaphor, metaphorical, 53, 76, 144, 167n19, 185n11 Methodological individualism, 200n31 Meyer, Eduard, 139–141, 212n46 Míguez Bonino, Jose, 181n15 Missionary, 71, 81 Misunderstanding, 14, 38, 43, 52, 69, 85, 94, 162n34, 168n21, 174n3, 213n2 Mojzes, Paul, 181n14 Monk, Ray, 48–49, 76, 153, 155n1, 155n2, 155n3, 162n38, 177n4, 179n25, 185n9, 186n13, 186n19, 189n1, 194n2, 194n30, 216n32 Moore, G. E., 2, 7, 14–15, 38–39, 61– 69, 71, 97, 129, 161n31, 164n45, 169n28, 176n13, 176n14, 180n1, 180n8, 190n5, 194n27 Moore’s paradox, 44, 176n13 Mormon, Mormonism, 41, 138–142, 212n46 Movement of thought, 21, 43–44, 83, 176n12

Index

Mphahlele, Es’kia, 58, 179n30 Munz, Volker, 197n23 Music, musical, 20, 24, 80–81, 83–84, 165n3, 165n6, 169n25, 174n1, 184n5, 190n3 Mystical vitalism, 99, 148 Nachlaß, 156n6, 198n26 Nagel, Thomas, 150, 206n33, 215n21 Nedo, Michael, 156n8, 164n3, 207n4 Nerves, nervous system, 55, 90–91, 99, 101, 194n7 Neurophysiology, neuroscience, 84, 87– 88, 95, 115, 119, 122–124, 193n21, 203n3, 205n20, 207n35 hegemony of, 88, 119, 203n2 risks of harm from, 121, 205n28 Newsome, Carol, 209n21, 209n24 Newton, Isaac, 110–111, 190n6, 198n24 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 21, 120, 187n30, 205n26 Nisbett, Richard, 149, 215n19 Norway, 1, 15, 51, 54, 57, 67, 77, 97, 173n74, 194n1 Notebooks: 1914–1916, 8–11, 97, 123, 125–126, 155n1, 161n26, 162n34, 168n20, 190n5, 194n31, 196n20, 198n26. See also Code, coded wartime diary later notebooks, 56, 139, 164n3, 181n12 Nozick, Robert, 194n26 Ogden, C. K., 6, 11, 157n1, 157n6, 158n9 Olmütz, Moravia, 12, 15, 78, 158n9, 187n27 Omniscient perspective, 132, 134 Organic, organism, 23, 98, 111–113, 200n31, 202n37 Organization, 74, 184n4 Ostwald, Wilhelm, 7

Index╆

Overview, overlook, 30, 75, 190n5. See also Perspecuity, perspicuous; Synopsis, synoptic view Pain, 32, 147, 149 criteria for, 39, 84, 86–87, 121, 192n17, 195n9, 214n8 part of ordinary discourse, 84, 88, 108, 115, 191n7, 191n11 Parables, 144, 174n6, 188n36 Peirce, Charles, 168n21 Perspicuity, perspicuous, 74, 185n6, 190n5. See also Overview, overlook; Survey, surveyable; Synopsis, synoptic view Persuade, persuasion, 62–63, 71, 84, 106, 109 Pessimism, pessimistic, 22, 63, 67, 69–71, 79, 95, 119–120, 153, 181n8, 187n26 Peterman, James, 166n17 Philosophical Investigations, 2, 17, 25, 47, 127, 164n46, 167n19, 177n1, 180n6, 213n2 motto to, 120 preface to, 13, 19, 156n5, 162n34, 163n41, 166n10, 185n10, 187n26 Philosophy, 28, 37, 39, 61, 68, 74–76, 84–85, 91, 94, 126, 128, 141, 151, 164n45, 174n5, 185n11, 208n9, 212n60, 213n4 language game of, 35–36 as poetry, 20, 145, 154, 165n7, 210n28 Physiological, physiology, 83, 85, 87, 94, 98–99, 101–102, 105, 108, 113, 128, 168n21, 194n7, 198n24 Piccoli, Raffaelo, 58 Picture, 32, 48, 85, 102–111, 147 duck–rabbit, 47–48, 177n3 of experience as an object, 33–37 world-picture (Weltbilt), 62–63, 70, 180n6 Piety, pious, 26, 107, 131, 133

245

Pinsent, David, 54–56, 97 Plant, 29, 112, 198n26 and seed it comes from, 97–105, 112, 128, 148, 196n21, 198n26, 214n12 Plato, 26–27, 80, 91, 107, 131, 160n23, 165n7, 165n8, 175n6, 188n36 Apology, 150, 165n8 Euthyphro, 26, 107, 131, 215n23 Meno, 26 Phaedrus, 163n40, 175n6 Protagoras, 215n23 Republic, 107, 133, 160n23, 165n7, 188n36 Seventh Letter, 163n40, 188n35, 175n6 Symposium, 215n23 Pluto as a planet, 192n20 Poem, poet, poetic, poetry, 20–21, 73, 145, 154, 165n7, 210n28 Popper, Karl, 174n2, 180n35, 215n17 Postel, Danny, 161n26 Preface, 20–21, 78, 127, 162n34, 166n10 1930 draft, 24–25, 56, 74, 77, 83, 120, 187n26 to PI, 13, 19, 21–22, 76, 156n5, 162n34, 163n41, 166n10, 166n11, 185n10 to TLP, 5, 15, 126, 155n3, 159n14 Prescott, William, 139 Presentist materialism, 148, 214n13 Privacy, private, 31, 36, 61, 170n37, 214n8 experience, impression, sensation, 31– 38, 45, 47, 128, 170n37, 214n8 (see also Transdescriptive experience) language, 31–32, 35, 38, 147 object, realm, world, 31–32, 34, 38 (see also Transdescriptive object) Progress, progressive, 23, 74, 84, 95, 111, 119–120, 154, 188n32 of science, 115, 118, 122, 124 Prophet, prophetic, 50, 53–54, 73, 76, 109, 203n2

246╆

Proof, prove, 33, 62–63, 103, 123, 181n9 Psychoanalysis, 90, 193n23 Putnam, Hilary, 146, 152, 191n8, 193n20, 193n21, 213n7, 214n13, 215n28 Qualitative indiscernibility, 33, 171n49 Quantum mechanics, 111, 149, 196n19, 202n35, 215n17, 215n18 Quine, Willard van Orman, 102, 148, 195n15, 196n17, 214n10 Ramsey, Frank, 2, 15, 52, 75–76, 155n3, 156n5, 156n6, 157n1, 158n9, 163n41, 185n10 Rapprochement, 66, 69 Rational, rationality, 63, 71–72, 131, 136, 141, 182n21 Reason, reasons, 38–39, 71–72, 103– 104, 109–110, 113, 127–129, 131, 134, 151, 208n12, 209n16 Reconcile, reconciliation, 63–64, 66–67, 69–71, 93, 207n34 irreconcilable, 64–65, 67 Redeem, redeemer, 125–126, 128 Redpath, Theodore, 192n18, 211n31 Reduce expectations, 26–27, 30, 52, 107, 149 Reduction, reducibility, 99–103, 110, 148–149, 195n9, 195n14, 197n21 nonreducibility, 101, 148 Reidemeister, Kurt, 155n4 Reiser, Stanley, 204n10 Relativism, 36, 70–71 Religion, 23, 35, 49, 65, 123–124, 138, 140, 182n21, 212n62 Renan, Ernest, 139–140, 177n6 Resignation of feeling, temperament, 141–142, 174n5, 206n30, 212n60 Respinger, Marguerite, 58, 194n1 Rhees, Rush, 12, 14, 32, 61, 75, 105, 116, 120, 139, 143, 156n8, 160n25,

Index

160n26, 180n3, 180n6, 185n8, 189n1, 197n23, 198n25, 204n9, 205n23, 208n12 Ricks, Christopher, 192n18 Rogers, Brian, 216n30 Rosch, Eleanor, 146, 213n5 Rosen, Nathan, 211n34, 211n36 Rothhaupt, Josef, 187n26 Rule, 41, 63–64, 89, 101, 127, 150–151, 203n2 rule-following, 34–35, 42, 63, 67, 168n21 Russell, Bertrand, 1, 5–8, 14–15, 22, 27– 28, 97, 138, 157n7, 157n9, 158n9, 158n10, 159n19, 162n35, 163n41, 183n25, 190n6, 195n10, 198n24, 202n36, 215n23 Russia, Russian, 76–77, 79, 97, 186n21, 211n31. See also Soviet Union Sacks, Oliver, 206n30 Safe, 142, 212n62 Said, Edward, 58, 81, 178n9, 180n33, 189n40 Santayana, George, 80, 189n38 Sargant, William, 121 Scherer, Peter, 209n25 Schlick, Moritz, 27, 78, 126, 130–131, 155n4, 187n28 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 9–10, 22, 118, 159n15, 159n17, 159n18, 202n36 Schulte, Joachim, 170n35, 177n1, 190n5, 207n5 Schumann, Robert, 22, 24, 79 Science and conceptual change, 87–88, 92–95, 103, 105, 108, 110–111, 117, 119, 124, 152, 192n18, 192n20, 194n24, 202n35, 206n32 and criteria, 87–88, 90, 92, 94, 107, 115–118 dangers of, 119–122, 204n10, 205n20, 205n21, 205n27, 216n37

Index╆

and Goethe, 29, 111–112 insulation from, 35, 84–85, 89, 92–93, 95, 99, 108–109, 113, 115–116, 118, 123–124, 152, 190n6, 195n10, 206n33, 207n34 modern scientific spirit, 29, 39, 74, 83, 102, 105–110, 129, 140, 151, 154, 199n28, 204n13, 213n2 and religion, 182n21 and telepathy, 201n34 Wittgenstein’s familiarity with, 83, 94 Scientism, scientistic, 83, 118, 143–144, 213n2. See also Idol, idolatry Seeds, 13, 16, 109, 181n8, 198n26 thought experiment about, 97–106, 111, 128–129, 134, 148, 151, 195n14, 196n21, 201n34, 214n12 Seeing, 88, 90, 92, 94, 108, 129, 138, 174n2 seeing as, 47–49, 73, 116 Seidel, Michael, 53, 179n13 Self, 100, 115–118 Self-coaching, 9, 11, 160n23 Sellars, Wilfrid, 204n13, 207n34 Sensibility, 29, 39, 54. See also Temperament Shah, Kanti, 191n16, 192n17, 196n21, 198n24 Shankar, Stuart, 194n4 Shoemaker, Sydney, 193n21 Sholl, Donald, 161n28 Silence, silent, 1, 19, 51, 126, 134, 138, 215n23 Skinner, Francis, 58, 77, 97, 163n44, 179n32, 186n13, 186n21 Smullyan, Raymond, 193n21 Smythies, Yorick, 37, 105, 172n63, 186n13, 197n23 Socrates, 26–31, 52, 106–107, 131, 150, 163n40, 165n7, 165n8, 168n23, 175n6, 183n28, 188n36, 215n23 Soul, 10, 28, 99, 121, 184n28, 198n24, 202n37, 205n20, 214n8

247

Soviet Union, 51, 58, 65, 77. See also Russia, Russian Spengler, Oswald, 22–25, 28–29, 52, 56, 73–74, 76, 78, 83, 102–103, 111–112, 166n14, 166n15, 166n17, 167n18, 167n19, 168n23, 169n33, 173n76, 177n5, 184n3, 184n5, 186n17, 188n32, 196n18, 200n31, 202n36, 202n37, 202n38, 202n44 Spirit, 11, 74, 78, 121, 160n19 high spirits, 68, 213n4 of the times, 24–29, 39–40, 56, 83, 103, 112, 129, 187n26, 213n2 Spiritual resting place, 131 Sraffa, Piero, 22, 43, 45, 58, 78, 176n12, 202n36 Stadler, Friedrich, 155n4 Stern, David, 164n46, 177n1 Stevenson, Charles, 44 Stich, Stephen, 119, 148, 194n5, 205n17, 205n19, 205n21, 205n22, 205n27, 214n13 Stop inquiry, 45, 128, 130, 134, 138, 141, 149–151, 207n9, 208n12, 210n26 Strange, stranger, 6, 43–44, 56, 69, 72, 75, 154, 168n21, 176n12. See also Alien, alienation; Fremd, Fremden, Fremder, Fremdling Subject, 118. See also Self Suffer, suffering, 86–87, 116–117 why do people suffer, 10, 132–136, 151, 175n6, 210n26, 210n27 Wittgenstein’s suffering, 153, 179n24, 183n25 Supervenience, 102, 148, 195n15, 214n12 Suppes, Patrick, 202n35, 215n18 Survey, surveyable, 30, 111, 185n6, 190n5. See also Overview, overlook; Perspecuity, perspicuous; Synopsis, synoptic view Swabey, Marie, 161n28

248╆

Index

Symptoms, 86–88, 94, 116, 191n7, 191n9, 204n7 Synopsis, synoptic view, 30, 84–85, 92–93, 190n5. See also Perspicuity, perspicuous; Survey, surveyable

Tribe, 61–64, 68–69, 71, 180n8 Trivial statements, 127, 174n2, 192n17 Truism, 127–128 Twin-earth cases, 146, 214n13 Tyson, Neil deGrasse, 192n20

Tabori, Paul, 52–53, 178n10, 179n16, 179n18, 189n39 Taylor, James, 81, 105, 197n23 Technical term, 27, 88, 192n20 Temperament, 26, 28–29, 35, 39–40, 42, 44–45, 55, 98, 104–105, 111, 113, 129–130, 135, 137–138, 141, 146, 151–152, 154, 173n76, 174n3, 176n12, 187n26, 198n24, 208n12, 215n18 and exile, 80 and philosophy, 28, 174n5, 212n60 ter Hark, Michel, 195n10 Thouless, Robert, 34, 37–38, 127, 174n2, 174n3, 201n34 Time-slices, 146, 214n13 Tolstoy, Leo, 10–11, 137, 159n19, 160n20, 211n31, 211n41 Toulmin, Stephen, 24, 88, 160n26, 168n20, 192n19 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1–2, 5–8, 10–13, 15, 17, 19, 51, 54, 85, 92, 126, 130, 158n9, 160n23, 160n26, 162n34, 164n1, 173n76, 185n10, 195n10, 216n37 dedication of, 54 as a dissertation, 7 impact of, 2, 155n4, 161n28 preface of, 5, 15, 126, 155n3, 159n14 publication of, 6–7, 11, 126 translation of, 156n5 Wittgenstein attempts to explain, 2, 15, 138, 158n9 Transdescriptive experience, 31–32, 84, 171n50 Transdescriptive object, 42, 171n50

Unconscious, 89–90, 193n23, 207n35 Understanding, understood, 5, 7, 14, 16, 24, 39, 41–45, 48, 50, 61, 64, 68– 69, 71, 85, 88, 92, 94, 108, 127, 141, 144, 146–148, 165n3, 173n1, 174n2, 174n6, 209n18 difficulty understanding, 2–3, 7, 12, 14–15, 19–21, 25, 32, 37, 39–40, 42–44, 49, 58–59, 129–130, 161n28, 163n41, 166n10, 168n21, 173n76 not understood, 1–2, 5–7, 13–14, 21–22, 24, 30, 34, 42–45, 49, 59, 74, 81, 83, 90, 95, 111, 129, 139, 144, 146, 157n8, 158n9, 158n10, 165n6, 167n19, 173n73, 173n74, 173n76, 174n3, 174n6, 176n12, 176n14, 198n24, 210n26 Vienna, 1–2, 51, 55, 57, 77–78, 80, 130, 155n4, 161n26, 189n1, 212n62 Vienna Circle, 2, 76, 156n4, 187n28, 195n10 von Wright, G. H., 16, 156n8, 159n14, 160n26, 163n43, 165n5, 166n14 Waismann, Friedrich, 27, 84, 131, 161n28, 162n34, 169n34, 186n16, 190n4, 193n23, 209n17 Watson, W. H., 196n17, 200n33 Weininger, Otto, 22, 202n36 Weiskrantz, Lawrence, 194n24 Wesley, Charles, 155n1 West, western, 188n34, 197n22, 202n37 Why, 129, 131, 133, 135–137, 139, 142, 151, 208n12 Wilderness, 49, 67, 73, 146, 189n43

Index╆

Wilkes, Kathleen, 204n13 Will, the, 7–8, 20, 39, 42, 118, 150, 159n13, 199n26, 215n17 Williams, Bernard, 151, 215n25 Wittgenstein, Hermine, 78, 157n8, 158n10, 159n19, 175n7, 179n24, 187n28 Wizard of Oz, 206n32, 213n8 Wohlstetter, Albert, 161n28 Wonder, wonderful, 22, 79, 111–112, 140, 153–154, 216n37 Wood, Alan, 158n12 Woodward, James, 203n3, 207n35 Wordsworth, William, 109, 200n32 Worldview, world picture, 62–63, 70, 136, 180n6 World War I, 1, 7, 9–11, 13, 15, 51, 55– 56, 67, 125, 130, 136, 138, 155n1, 159n17, 159n19, 160n23, 160n26, 161n26, 173n76, 182n24, 183n25, 187n30, 211n40 coded diaries from, 8, 10, 56, 67–69, 125–126, 130, 155n1, 159n19, 161n26, 182n24, 187n30, 213n4 World War II, 22, 39, 51, 53, 77, 83, 94, 164n44, 182n21, 201n34 Zadeh, L. A., 213n6 Zosima, Father, 136–138, 141 Zweig, Fritz, 78 Zweig, Max, 78

249