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Introduction: How Not to View Vienna 1900 When Elias Canetti was informed that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature he accepted the honor in the name of four Austrians who had not been so honored: Franz Kafka, 1 Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, and Hermann Broch. 2 There can be little doubt that C'anctti's remark was highly ironic. It was not simply that one great Austrian writer had been neglected in his eyes, but a whole series of tlwm-Canetti's very heroes and exemplars-had been passed over. ( >n the surface, then, Canetti was reminding those who would honor him of the remarkable richness and critical potential in Austrian lett~·rs and at the same time emphasizing the lack of recognition that I h~sc writers had suffered. He thus chose to underscore that in hontll'ing him, an Austrian, born in Bulgaria, living in London, and writmg in German, the Swedish Academy would be honoring his heroes too. This anecdote serves as a reminder at once of the magnitude of lhl.! Dual Monarchy's contribution to modem culture as well as its tWnchant for ignoring, if not actually abusing, the geniuses it bred. It' Swedes could ignore brilliant Austrians, it was only because Austrians had already set the fashion and no Austrians were better at that than the Viennese. Indeed, the Viennese treatment of home).',rown talent only serves to remind us of the city's amazing capacity to ignore creative individuals at best and persecute them at worst while they lived, only to adulate them once dead. If we need examples we need only look to her treatment of her composers: Mozart, always happier and better received in Prague, Schubert (for most of his life), Bruckner, Mahler, and Hugo Wolf. The failure of the Vienna Circle, which revolutionized philosophy in the English-speaking world, to have any impact upon philosophy in its native city till after World War II is no less depressing, as are the cases of Sigmund l•'r~ud, Robert Musil, and Karl Kraus. If we arc to understand Vienna
2
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
as a creative milieu, it is of paramount importance that we recognize the role that Vienna's almost incredible hostility to her most illustrious sons played in forming that milieu. So it should not be surprising that Vienna should breed critical spirits like the late Thomas Bernhard who have rewarded her hostility in kind. In short, here, as in everything else, to understand Vienna is to understand her as a city of paradoxes. 3 Three of Canetti's heroes, Kraus, Musil, and Brach, were Viennese. Kraus in fact spent his life as a sort of professional anti-Viennese. Indeed, so vehement was his opposition to the powers that be that he is all but incomprehensible apart from the cultural context of Alt Wien. 4 His satires and polemics were directed at the shallowness and hypocrisy which permitted the Viennese to ridicule the gifted and heap praise on the mediocre. His campaign against superficially dazzling shoddiness was rewarded, as in the case of his enemy Sigmund Freud, with a conspiracy of silence (Totschweigen) on the part of the Viennese press, his archenemy. Thus only the Socialist Arbeiterzeitung among Viennese papers reported the obituary of Kraus's friend and colleague, Adolf Laos, because Kraus gave the graveside eulogy. Musil was never at home in Vienna. It is not for nothing that the Habsburg imperial capital is depicted as a pathological phenomenon fit only for phenomenological dissection in his chef d'oeuvre, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man Without Qualities). If Freud, Mach, and Laos were in some sense spiritually and culturally Englishmen, Musil was a Berliner. 5 Brach may have matured in Vienna but it was in New York and at Yale that he did much of his best work and finally attained the recognition he so well deserved. Canetti, like Kraus (i.e., in Germany, France and Czechoslovakia during his lifetime at least), has fared much better abroad than at home. It is the merit of Fredrick Morton's lively-and aptly namedsurvey of the events of 1889 in Vienna, A Nervous Splendor, to have pointed out that but a single figure of note in the city's cultural life that year was entirely free of tormenting self-doubts: Johannes Brahms. 6 Not even the immensely successful Johann Strauss was entirely free from insecurity-not to mention the cases of Bruckner, Freud, Schnitzler, Hugo Wolf and the Crown Prince, who would take his own life along with that of his mistress at Mayerling in the rpmantic Vienna Woods before that fateful year was out. It is precisely this insc~.:urily incidentally which helps to explain why gifted
Introduction • Uow Not to VIew Vienna 1900
3
111dividuals often chose not to know each other when it was easily pilssible to do so, if there was a danger that their originality might be nunpromised-witness the case of Freud and Schnitzler. 7 This should lw emphasized because people often get the false impression that t•wrybody was on intimate terms with everyone else in Old Vienna, which was hardly the case. The point is, then, that Vienna was indt•l•d a cultural "hothouse," 8 as Carl Schorske insists, but the tendt•ncy of the gardeners was to let what blossomed wilt. With the pumdoxical truth captured in Franz Theodor Csokor's description or Vienna 1900 as a "flashy collapse" (farbenvolle Untergang) or Bmch 's "cheerful apocalypse" (frohliche Apokalypse) in mind we nn• ready to examine the factors which fertilized that garden. The first factor which must be emphasized is sheer size. Alt Wien was a huge metropolis with two million residents, the capital of an t'lllpire of fifty million. With such a large population it is simply ~latistically more probable that creative individuals would emerge IIH'I'C than in a little town, i.e., it would be mightily surprising if they d1d not. Between the mid-nineteenth century and 1914 Vienna grew hy leaps and bounds. In 1857 there were 476, 220 Viennese, by 11)10 there were 2, 031,420. 9 One noteworthy feature of the city's 1-'.mwth is that to this very day Vienna seems smaller than it actually 1~. In Vienna you never have the feeling of being in a large city that you do, say, in London, Paris, or New York (which are all, of course, hq.!,p;er cities than Vienna, but similar to Vienna as metropolises). Indeed, in Vienna one could almost say that perception of the size of tlw city varies inversely with the social class of the residents-the hitJ,her their class, the smaller the city would seem due to the conL'l'lllration of the upper classes in the city's center with its small scale. A second factor in explaining why Vienna became a great culllll"ill center is its multiple role in the Dual Monarchy as imperial L:apital, economic hub, and provincial capital as well as being the lur~cst city in the realm. As imperial capital it was the focus of imperial patronage of the arts as well as seat of the empire's administration-and we should not forget the old saying according to which Austria is not ruled but administered-so great was the challenge of unil"ying an empire of fifty million speaking eleven official languages, not to mention dialects, on the one hand, so Byzantine, the practices or the imperial bureaucracy, on the other, that to this day it has proven dil"fi~.:ult to form an accurate estimate of the achievement involved. l'"nlln the administrative point of view the judicial system, say, was a
4
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
highly efficient Zweckrational institution; yet, it is not wholly accidental that Franz Kafka's The Trial was written under the Dual Monarchy. Part of the explanation for this paradox lies in the schizoid origins of the Habsburg bureaucracy. 1° Founded as an instrument of radical social reform by the "revolutionary" Emperor Joseph II, the bureaucracy was re-oriented by the ultra reactionary Emperor Francis I in the direction of maintaining the status quo without ever being transformed into a genuine vehicle for reaction. Francis was so reactionary that he would not go so far as to abolish an existing revolutionary institution. The schizoid character of the bureaucracy, then, lay in its Josephine concept as it came into conflict with its Franciscan modus operandi. If Vienna's role as the business and financial center of the monarchy was for the requisite concentration of wealth for the support of cultural activities on a large scale, bourgeois imitation of aristocratic traditions of patronage of the arts-at least as far as the "baroque arts" of painting, architecture and music were concerned-insured that the bourgeois so employed their riches. From 1860 onwards as Carl Schorske has graphically and gripplingly delineated in his essay on Ringstrasse architecture, the newly dominant bourgeoisie sought to emulate Habsburg practices by stamping new public buildings: the university, the opera, the theater, parliament, the city hall, etc., as symbols of its civic aspirations.11 As provincial capital of Lower Austria Vienna housed its own bureaucracy in addition to the imperial administration. As the empire's largest city, Vienna required newspapers, theaters, cafes, and all that appertains to the elegance of modern municipal life. Naturally enough, the requirements of such an administrative and financial center included the demand for solid educational institutions. To that end, secondary education was completely overhauled already under the absolutist regime in the 1850s. The success of this reform, which produced the superb Viennese classical Gymnasium, was highly distressing to absolutism's liberal foes, whose ideal of Bildung it pre-empted. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the classical gymnasium: years spent translating Latin and Greek classics sensitized the Viennese pupil both to rhetorical structure and architectonics as well as to the nuances of style which make elegant self-expression possible. 12 However tedious this may have been for the pupils, this rigorous regimentation produced minds of a caliber seldom seen today outside of an English public school or a French lvn'l'. Indeed, it was and remains one of the great ironies of
Introduction • How Not to View Vienna 1900
5
11111dern culture that the very classical learning which produced so IIIHIIY brilliant thinkers and stylists wa~ so widely condemned by its 11Wil products. Be that as it may, rigorous classical education was uhsolutely crucial in making Alt Wien into the creative milieu that it was. This consideration of Vienna's multiple role in the Dual MonarL·hy leads us to the third factor in explaining how Vienna became a L'llltural center and a creative milieu. All of the functions we have nwntioned stimulated movement to and fro between the capital and t ht• provinces, a movement which already accounted for Vienna's polyglot character in the eighteenth century. But the provinces of t hl• Habsburg Empire were unique in that the Empire was studded with metropolitan cultural centers, some of which, like Prague, were older than Vienna itself but were nevertheless oriented to that city l'ur the reasons already mentioned. Prague, Budapest, Trieste, Cracow, l,aibach, Lemberg, Czernowitz, and a host of yet smaller urban cenlt't'S continually fed Vienna with talent 13 (only the role of Edinburgh 111 the development of London seems comparable to the relationship ur Vienna and, say, Prague). Moreover, unlike Berlin, Paris, or New York, there was a reciprocal character to the movement between the t·apital and these towns. An aspiring Viennese musician or scientist 111ight begin his career in, say, Czernowitz and then, once having t•stablished himself, return to Vienna. He would, however, bring something with him as he moved in each direction. The importance of this interplay has only begun to be rediscovered since the opening of the former Communist bloc and has hardly really begun to be l'Xplored in depth. Be that as it may, this to and fro movement of peoples speaking so many different languages accustomed the Viennese (in comparison, say, with the Berliner) to an extraordinary variety in diet, idiom, and cultural expression. However much the native Viennese might resent the Czech, the Dalmatian, the Magyar, or the Galician Jew, he was familiar with all of them. That familiarity bred a cosmopolitan wit--even if it were to have scurrilous, racist, und sardonic overtones. However, this was not the only sort of mi~ration to the Habsburg capital. For all of the reasons we have mentioned Vienna attracted foreigners such as Metternich, Leibniz, BrOcke, Meynert, Krafft-Ebing, Beethoven, H.S. Chamberlain to her us well as providing temporary residence for figures like Wagner, Lenin, Trotsky, and Mussolini-and the list could be extended indd'initely. Vienna would hardly have had such a magnetic effect
Introduction - How Not to View Vienna 1900
6
7
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
were it not for her relative economic prosperity after 1860 and especially after 1867, which certainly cannot be omitted from any account of its emergence as a cultural center. Huge fortunes were made overnight when the economy was liberalized in the wake of the Compromise with Hungary in 1867. The next set of features we must discuss in aid of explaining how Vienna became such a matrix for creativity is perhaps the most important: her talent-fostering traditions. It has rightly been pointed out that creativity depends upon excellence; however, excellence, in turn, depends upon the existence of practices and customs which further that excellence. We can begin with Vienna's excellence in medical science, which was already well established by 1848 and second to none by the tum of the century. In 1745 Maria Theresa invited a number of Dutch doctors to Vienna to teach medicine under supervision from their countryman, Gerard van Swieten. 14 Her successor, Joseph II, founded the General Hospital as an institution for providing state care for the populace. It was not only that a tradition of medical excellence was 100 years old in 1848, but also a tradition of liberal humanism as well-as Arthur Schnitzler, a doctor by training and the son of a doctor, never ceases to remind us in his writings, whose conflicts often turn upon the opposition between the values of a callous army officer and those of a kindly doctor. Nor is it accidental that a Freud should have emerged in Vienna-or for that matter that he should have encountered such stiff opposition there. Vienna's eminence in medicine, which is in fact the source of American medical excellence, was, like almost everything typically Viennese, Janus-faced. However, medical excellence went hand-in-hand with (1) a certain dogmatism, which manifested itself variously as "therapeutic nihilism", the refusal to prescribe cures for fear of perpetuating quack remedies and was itself not incompatible with (2) a certain callousness with regard to the treatment of patients. Further, it went hand-in-hand with (3) a certain intolerance with regard to innovation as was the case with the reception of Freud's views on the aetieology of hysteria and Semelweiss's suggestion that doctors could eliminate childbed fever by washing their hands between dissecting cadavers and assisting women in childbirth. Finally, (4) it went handin-hand with a certain professional elitism or clannishness, which munifested itself in America where Viennese-trained doctors led the 1 campaign to abolish midwifery. ~
We find a similar ambiguity in Vienna's musical heritage. Musical life has blossomed in Vienna at least since the mid-eighteenth cenlUry. Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II, were great patrons of the musical arts. Joseph was especially concerned with the development of German-language opera, with which he hoped to sway popular taste away from the crudities of Italian commedia dell' arte farce, which had been well-ensconced in Vienna since the Renaissance. 16 Aristocratic families like the Lobkowitzes, the Kinskys, and, of course, Haydn's patrons, the Esterhazys, were also staunch patrons of music. Gottfried van Swieten, whose father, Gerard, we have alll~ady encountered, was not only a friend and patron of both Haydn nnd Mozart, but was largely responsible for the rediscovery of Bach and Handel. Such patrons of the arts were, as Arnold Schoenberg, ucver tired of pointing out, highly sophisticated connoisseurs, who were often talented performers in their own right. The Viennese musical tradition got a big boost from the French Revolution. In the reactionary realm of Emperor Francis I music, opera apart, was considered a safe art, uncontaminated by revolutionary ideology and incapable of criticizing the regime. No small part of Vienna's eminence in musical history, then, is tied to official fear of the word. Interest in music was essentially bound to censorship of the spoken and written word. This represented a blow to the Viennese, espel'ially as it meant a fairly strict censorship of the favorite Viennese popular entertainment, theater. However, the less-than-Draconian stringency of the censorship itself became an opportunity for gifted satirists, like the very Viennese Johann Nestroy, to try to fool the l'Cnsors and thus itself became a source of Viennese creativity. 17 To appreciate the full significance of the Viennese obsession with theater, drama, and the like is ultimately to tell a long story about the role of spectacle, symbol and ornament in Austrian life, which could hmdly even be summarized here. However, it is crucial to point out 1hat fascination with theater is but one aspect of a certain theatricality which was-and still is-part and parcel of Viennese life. This is 111ore relevant to our discussion of Vienna 1900 as a creative milieu than theater per se. Hardly anything is more important in the crucial task of understanding the uniquely Austrian and typically Viennese wuy of demarcating the public and the private. The story of how spectacle, symbol, and ornament became so central to Viennese cultural life takes us seemingly far afield, for it begins with the forcible rc-Catholicization of what is today east and southeast Austria. These
8
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
regions, including Vienna, had gone over to Protestantism a few scant years after Luther nailed his theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. 18 In the religious wars of the Reformation the Habsburgs, like their Bavarian cousins, the Wittelsbachs, were wholly identified with Catholicism after 1608. Thus those distinctively Counter-Reformation styles, the Baroque and the Mannerist, became symbols of Habsburg authority. The imposing majesty of a Baroque cathedral or monastery, say, was a wholly political reminder of Habsburg political might to the dissenting. The same is true of the pageants on Church holidays such as Corpus Christi, which came to characterize public life, mitigating absolutism with spectacle. As the political significance faded away, the taste for spectacle did not; rather, it was transformed in an enormous variety of ways. The Baroque, then, at once established a standard of public taste and sowed the seeds of later social criticism by providing secularized dissenters with a natural target, ornament. At this very time the imperial theater provided Vienna with its first taste of "modern," secular culture and the meeting place for the aristocracy and the new bourgeois class, so anxious to legitimize itself by imitating the splendors of aristocratic style. Thus the art that the small haute bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century cultivated was principally "baroque": music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, in short pictorial and edifying, rather than verbal and critical (as it was in Protestant lands such as England, Sweden, or Holland). Growing concern for luxury evoked a critical moral (or better moralistic) response in the witty sermons of the court preacher Ulrich Megerle, alias Abraham a Santa Clara. For some forty years starting in the 1660s Abraham effectively turned the charm of secular culture, its very theatricality, against itself in hilariously devastating 19 sermons castigating the Viennese for their worldliness. Abraham is a particularly important figure for our story, for he marks the beginning of a Viennese rhetorical tradition and a mode of social criticism, which is distinguished by its efforts to turn Viennese obsession with style against itself. Abraham's rhetoric foreshadows Vienna's populist, anti-Semitic, fin de siecle mayor, Karl Lueger, in its exploitation of local idiom, its wit and emotional appeal, but also, paradoxically, Lueger's archenemy, Karl Kraus, in its resourceful efforts to turn the tables on the corrupt comically-although it must be hastily added that Kraus's values were hardly Abraham's. Abraham is a figure, then, who helps us to draw two crucial features of the
Introduction- How Not to View Vienna 1900
9
creative milieu that was Vienna into relief. First, by considering the case of Abraham a Santa Clara we begin to see how Viennese moral fervor could take on unusual forms as it would later in, say, Arnold Schoenberg's theory of harmony or a book of technical aphorisms which tries to get clear about just what you cannot put into words at all with the young Wittgenstein. Second, it helps us get a grasp of how it could be that both Lueger and Kraus, for all their differences, both manifest a single aspect of the Viennese heritage (albeit not in the same way or in the same sense). 20 However, there is yet more to say about the implications of the Habsburg forcible re-Catholicization of Vienna. Reflect for a moment upon the state of mind of the recently re-Catholicized Protestant. He had only recently learned that his conscience was the sole legitimate guide in moral matters as well as that all religious symbols and ceremonies were idolatrous. Now the state, as it were, forced him to commit idolatry, i.e., to act exactly counter to his convictionsY It is not difficult to see how cynicism about public life and a certain fatalistic alienation with respect to ethical matters could come to go hand in hand in Vienna. Thus we find fatalism and alienation lurking everywhere in that quintessentially Viennese art form, the Wienerlied: "wenn der Herrgott nicht will, niitzt es gar nix" (roughly: "if the Good Lord ain't willin' fergit it"). In effect, the forcible reCatholicization of Vienna and its environs amounted to a curious kind of semi-secularization, for religious beliefs became something ornamental and extraneous to public life. Over generations as the memory of Protestant Vienna faded, and even more so after the failure of the French Revolution as reaction set in and the possibilities for Enlightenment vanished, the temptations to cynicism grew even greater. Certainly, it was possible to capitulate and enjoy the show, or even contribute to its orchestration in the way that, say, a Makart or Strauss did, or you could go into a kind of inner "emigration" as some Biedermeier intellectuals did. 22 A third possibility was to attack the very role that spectacle had come to play in society. However, to take this path you had to beat the enemy at his own game. In effect the forcible re-Catholicization policy of the Habsburgs, strongly reinforced by the triumph of the forces of reaction in the Napoleonic wars, laid down premises upon which a good part of subsequent Austrian culture and counterculture was to rest. The events of the Counter-Reformation set in motion sociocultural force which later were capable of making, say, the Loos Haus am Michaelerplatz
10
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
with its unadorned facade, which so annoyed Francis Joseph that he ceased to use the entrance to the Imperial Palace opposite it, a symbolic commentary upon and confrontation with the mores and institutions of a whole society. Thus Georg Trakl could write in its guest book: "Countenance of a building: seriousness and silence of stone full, forcefully formed: to Adolf Loos in admiration." 23 Nor in this light is it altogether accidental that the work which most epitomizes the self-delusions of fin de siecle Viennese, Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus, should prominently feature an aria which begins "Glticklich ist, wer vergiBt, was doch nicht zu andern ist" (roughly: "happiness is forgetting what cannot be changed"). The phrase "the whole society" should not pass without commentary here, for it has a special significance. It is crucial to emphasize that there was in Vienna at this time, unlike Berlin, a genuine popular culture with roots as far back as Mozart's day and even farther. Indeed, Joseph's concern to develop opera in German, which is responsible for Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute, is part of a response to a demand which was growing up in what was then the suburbs of Vienna. Already at this time there was a tradition of local comedy, which was itself rooted in the Italian commedia dell' arte and Shakespeare. Already the conventions of mocking and fondly tampering with the "high culture" of the Burgtheater were altogether well-established in such pieces as Othellerl, Moor of Vienna. In Vienna: Legend and Reality Ilse Barea suggests that the cultural conundrums surrounding the plot of The Magic Flute, the odd juxtaposition of Tamino and Papageno, are at least a bit less puzzling when you realize that the work belongs to a locality, the Freihaus auf der Wieden, which was Vienna's biggest 24 tenement house and virtually a self-contained suburb. The myriad contradictions in Schikaneder's plot are easier to fathom when you realize that the work was written to appeal to the simple-minded, earthy sense of humor of the suburban bourgeoisie and yet, at the same time reflect their aspirations. In the nineteenth century, Ferdinand Raimund and later Johann Nestroy developed these traditions in different ways. However, lest we roam too far afield of our subject, the point of introducing all of this is to emphasize that Habsburg autocracy was not incompatible with a full cultural life for the whole populace. There was in Vienna already in the eighteenth century a kind of democratization of culture that one did not hnvc in, sny, lkl'lin until considerably later. Thus the ordinary
Introduction - How Not to View Vienna 1900
11
Viennese-in-the-street was no less appreciative of a well-turned phrase that his haut-bourgeois fellow townsmen. This too was a Viennese culture-fostering tradition. Clearly, it would be possible to go on listing historical examples of the way Viennese traditions nurtured competence in the populace which were conducive to creativity. Our aim here has not been to be comprehensive but to explain the kind of considerations which are relevant to understanding how it was that Vienna became the creative center that it was. In doing so we have only been able to scratch the surface. For example, we have said little about the groups that migrated to Vienna. Above all, we have not mentioned the Jews, whose contributions to Vienna at the height of her creative phase is way out of proportion to their numbers. Both as creative individuals and as patrons of the arts the Jews of Vienna played a very special role in making Vienna 1900 the kind of place it was. Indeed, one must agree with Steven Beller that Vienna's Jews provided both the talent and, what is even more crucial, the element of cultural leadership which accounted for the impact, i.e., the recognition and dissemination of radically new achievements at the turn of the century as Jewish artists and patrons of the arts forged links between tmdition and novelty. We refer here to the Jewish salons such as those of the Wertheimstein sisters. 25 What cannot be denied is that Viennn was never as interesting before or since as she was during the pcriud from 1860 to 1938 when Jews largely dominated the cultural scene/'' At this point, then, it is important to make explicit what is to be learned about creative milieux from the case of Vienna. The results will be surprising to many, for much of what made Vienna into a cultural center was less than desirable in itself. We forget at our peri I that Vienna was also the toughest and most thorough school of his I if'e in the mind of Adolf HitlerY Similarly, we forget at our peril that the obverse of Vienna's soft side, cafe society and Strauss waltzes, was the hard side represented by wretched housing for the poor and philistinism with respect to the arts on the part of the official bureaucratic intelligentsia. Forcible re-Catholicization, Byzantine bureaucracy, semi-efficient censorship and even hostility to innovation itself all contributed to producing an environment conducive to what we today with the wisdom of hindsight can recognize as creativity hut they are most unlikely candidates for cornerstones of policymaking on the part of those who would call a creative milieu into existence. Another set of factors such as size, position, wealth,
12
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
Introduction - How Not to View Vienna 1900
secular atmosphere, and so 0n cannot be left out of the story. They are necessary but they are by no stretch of the imagination sufficient for explaining how Vienna became the "hothouse" of culture that she did one hundred years ago. When we tum to factors like excellence in education and culture-fostering traditions of patronage we are getting closer to what we seek, but in the end these factors too fail to be sufficient for explaining how the quality of intellectual life became so conducive to creativity. Lest we give up in despair, two factors need to be emphasized. First, the interplay of all the aforementioned factors, of conscious efforts and chance effects, is clearly just as important as any important single factor. The interplay of the factors is, after all, the milieu. Secondly, the Viennese idiosyncrasies of the implementation of policies (the mode of rule-following, in Wittgenstein's terms) with regard to factors such as censorship lent a peculiar character to those institutions and, thus, helped constitute the environment. If this is right, if there is a lesson to be learned from the case of Vienna, it has to be that creative milieux cannot be decreed into existence. They must grow, however inorganically. This is because a stimulating environment, as Arnold Toynbee recognized long ago, is a challenging one. However, what makes the environment challenging has to do with the way in which it both nourishes and fails to nourish its inhabitants, with the way in which it proportions its inhabitants to respond to it. However, this is a matter of the way it conditions us, not simply to do what we do, but how we do what we learn to do. Yet, this is precisely what is so devilishly difficult to capture. Paradoxically, it is often the outsider who can catch this when natives themselves cannot. Thus Americans have to tum to de Tocqueville when they seek to get a good glimpse of themselves. If there is anything to be learned about creativity from the case of Vienna, then, it seems to be the Hegelian truth that creativity is the product of the "cunning of reason." However, we should not be dismayed by that thought, for it is the very unpredictability connected with creativity which makes it so precious in the first place.
*
*
*
The conditions conducive to cultural creativity probably are always linked to ambiguity. So the case of Vienna should hardly be c.•xpcc.·tc.•d to he uniqul'. II is llHll'l' that the ambiguous character of
13
Viennese institutions is more pronounced than those elsewhere. The Viennese bourgeois form of what would later come to be called alienation was an alienation with society not an alienation from society as Carl Schorske has emphasized. The Viennese form of alienation was intimately tied to what was basically an uncritical fixation on culture with its extreme fondness for theatricality as well as an obsession with one's identity in a social situation where one's public persona often had precious little in common with one's private thoughts. What we have termed critical modernism was one peculiar Viennese response to this situation of being alienated with society, which seems to be the destiny of Western society. Arnold Schoenberg was a principal representative of the critical modernist attitude to culture and society. Thus it is to his cultural critique that we now tum to introduce the crucial notion of critical modernism.
1 The Critical Modernism of a Viennese Composer "You are beautiful, but dangerous too, ... you Capua of the mind .... Music all round, as when the choir of birds wakes the trees. One does not speak, one scarcely thinks, and feels what is half thought ... " -Franz Grillparzer, "Abschied von Wku" "Schon bist du, doch gefahrlich auch, ... Du Capua der Geister .... Wei thin Musik, wie wenn im Baum Der Vogel Chor erwachte, Man spricht nicht, denkt wohl etwa kaum Und fiihlt das Halb-Gedachte ... "
~
In his insightful essay "Arnold Schoenberg-A Perspective" Glenn Gould wrote, "The fact that people tend to make ... [a] distinctiun between the theories which Schoenberg tried to substantiate and his actual product as a composer haunted and tortured him throughout most of his life. He regarded himself simply as a composer, and he believed that whatever formulations he developed pertained only to his compositions." 1 While Gould is certainly basically right to insist that composition was always Schoenberg's primary concern-the composer insisted that he wanted nothing more than that a contented public would go home whistling his. melodies after a concert2-there is more to the matter than meets the eye. Schoenberg's writings, especially the critical essays in Style and Idea, are by no means to be passed over lightly as Gould might seem to intimate. In order to be the composer that he wanted to be in the cultural "hot15
16
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
house," 3 that was the Vienna in which he grew to maturity-we forget at our peril that much that we have come to see as typically "modern" in areas such as Jugendstil art and architecture, the philosophy of Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, the poetry of Hofmannsthal and Trakl, the fiction of Musil and Brach and the painting of Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka, not to mention so much modern music, had its origins there-it was necessary for him to become a cultural critic4 as well as a composer-ironically in much the same way that Gould himself in some sense had to be an essayist to be the performer he wanted to be in North America during the latter half of the twentieth century. Like so many typically "modern" artists, Schoenberg had to struggle to make room for his demanding art in a society that was suffused with music. However, unlike so many of his colleagues, his efforts to create elbow-room for his compositions did not take the form of the manifesto with all the histrionics that often come with it, but was a form of cultural critique intended strictly to parallel his lifelong effort to compose "logically" by articulating both the logic of musical composition and its pendant the logic of music appreciation. Moreover, the fact that he composed out of Vienna's immensely rich musical tradition did much to determine the form that his cultural criticism would take. Finally, despite so many superficial dissimilarities, the very confusions with respect to the relationship between art and entertainment that we have in some sense inherited from fin de siecle Vienna and their continuity with the Hollywood-dominated cultural scene today in which French philosophers and American fundamentalist preachers become television stars; while American actors get elected president, make Schoenberg's reflections upon music, deeply embedded in fin de siecle Vienna as they are, as fresh and relevant now as when he wrote them. In fact Schoenberg's project to develop a genuine musical culture for Vienna was part of a more general campaign on the part of critical intellectuals there to come to grips with what Hermann Brach would later in his celebrated essay on Hofmannsthal and his times term the Viennese "value vacuum." By the "value vacuum" in Viennese society Broch meant that fascination, nay, obsession with novelty that comes with the simultaneous awareness that the old values whkh hav~..~ informed nrt have ceased to be compelling without huving been rcplur~..·d by anything solid. ln other words style for stylt•'s own snkc devoid or any morul dimension became the central
The Critical Modernism of 11 Viennese Composer
.17
111111\:iple of Viennese aestheticism's non-aesthetic. 5 At the same time m·-.lhctic considerations tended to dominate public life. Carl Schorske hu-. described the ensuing situation trenchantly and succinctly: I •.hew here in Europe, art for art's sake implied the withdrawal of its devotees from a ~m·inl class; in Vienna alone it claimed the allegiance of virtually a whole class, of which thl' artists were a part. The life of art became a substitute for the life of action. Indeed, a~ l'ivic action proved increasingly futile, art became almost a religion, the source of llll'tllling and the food of the souP
And, if art became religion, politics became theater, as the opportulllslk anti-Semite Karl Lueger came to dominate Viennese public llll' in the years from 1895 till his death in 1911. I •'m Schoenberg the Viennese "value vacuum" manifested itself 111 111usic in that sense of comfort and ease which makes people too lu:t.y to look actively for anything worthwhile at all. Long before 1\rm:h and Schoenberg, Franz Grillparzer had described Vienna us u "( 'apua of the mind," where sensual delights could easily corrupt tlw unwary intellectual in the same way that the delights or ( 'upuu undermined the morale of Hannibal's troops paving the wuy lu dch·nt in battle. 7 In a sense one could compare the role cultui·nl niticism in Schoenberg's project to construct a musical culturl' ror u .. udety that already had a musical culture of sorts to Kierkeguurd '11 tusk of introducing Christianity into "Christendom." 8 The unulogy with Kierkegaard is appropriate because the task at hand in both l'ascs was very much one of replacing a set of counterfeit values with genuine ones. In any case, both Schoenberg's music and his writings aimed at dutllenging that complacency. Consider the preface to his Treatise on Harmony of 1911: "it's easy to have a 'world view' if you only view what is pleasant and you don't deign to glance at the rest." 9 It is highly significant that he praises August Strindberg and Otto Weininger for resisting that temptation by presenting life as essen! ially problematic. 10 However, it is even more significant that he coul.d have appended the following dedication to the copy that he sent to Karl Kraus-and that he insisted on reprinting that dedication in the tribute the Innsbruck periodical Der Brenner paid to Kraus in its "Rundfrage iiber Karl Kraus" defending Kraus from defamation: "I have learned more from you than one can learn if one wants to remain independent." 11 Why was Kraus so important for Schoenberg? When we have the answer to this question we shall be in a position to gain the proper perspective on the
or
18
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
relationship between Schoenberg's compositions and his cultural criticism. Who was this Karl Kraus that Schoenberg so admired? 12 In 1899 Kraus (1874-1936) began his life's work of holding a mirror up to the dubious values that permeated Viennese high culture. In the periodical Die Fackel (The Torch), which he founded in that year and which he wrote alone in from 1911 till1936 Kraus subjected Viennese values to a ceaseless critique so scathing that it earned him the honor of becoming the object of a conspiracy of silence on the part of the Viennese press (with the exception of the Socialist Arbeiterzeitung). An altogether vile constellation of corrupt politicians, greedy entrepreneurs, and unscrupulous journalists as well as fickle aesthetes, Zionism, psychoanalysis, the horror of World War I, in short, everything that made the world of Vienna at the tum of the century an "inverted world," 13 came to be the object of his relentless attacks. The effectiveness of his polemic was assured by his capacity to wield language dazzlingly. He "analyzed" his opponents' character in a barrage of quotation and word play that ended up extracting the true meaning from their duplicitous, superficial, pretentious, and absurd assertions. His principle was that a person's moral values were intimately related to his typical modes of expression. Style, on this view, reflected not only the logical fallacies but also the very character of the writer-or the publisher. Indeed, the press itself became increasingly the object of his wrath for its readiness to present distortions of the news for a price. As a vigorous campaigner for the right to privacy in sexual matters he was wont simply to publish headlines condemning moral laxity and the depravity of homosexuals alongside advertisments for "massage" parlors and "escort services" from the back pages of the same papers. It was his task to bring that lack of integrity to the surface. He was so adept at doing so in an unforgettably hilarious way that before long in many cases it was merely necessary for him to quote miscreants in order to make his point. His success at clearly demarcating character from mere pretentiousness made him the center of a movement that he led along with his friend the pioneer functionalist architect, AdolfLoos (1870-1933), to restore a lost (some might prefer to say missing) integrity to public life. 14 For Loos the introduction of truly modern, truly functional architecture into Vienna demanded a rigorous critique of Viennese "good tasleY," sturting. with such simple matters as table manners and fashion. To this end he l'ditl'd ror n time il periodical called The Other, whose
The Critical Modernism of a Viennese Composer
19
purpose was "to introduce Western culture into Austria" as its subtitle ran. If the challenge was great, the goal was simple in the words of Kraus: Adolf Laos and 1-he literally and I grammatically-have done nothing else than to show that there is a distinction between and an urn and a chamber pot and that it is this distinction above all which provides culture with elbow room. The others, who fail to make this distinction, are divided into those who use the urn as a chamber pot and those who use the chamber pot as urn. 15
In a culture so fascinated by ornamental "beauty" that it sought to embellish a butter knife by turning it into a Turkish dagger, an ash tray into a Prussian helmet, and a thermometer into a pistol, and in which every material tried to look like more than it was, Loos fought desperately to demonstrate that there is a fundamental distinction between art and utility, between functionality and fantasy, that we ignore this at the price of our incapacity to understand anything at all except superficially. In this sense, Kraus would later insist that World War I was happening precisely because we could not imagine it. 16 Viennese aestheticism in its fascination with decoration wus on the verge of criminality in its disavowal of fundamental values and, in the end, rationality and objectivity itself: "cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of ornament from articles in daily use." 17 Thus Loos proclaimed a revolution against revolution, not because he was a counterrevolutionary, but because the very term "revolution" had been co-opted into the mainstream of Viennese conventionality. In his writing as in his building, Loos demanded that scntpulous attention be paid to precisely that craftsmanship that conventional Viennese "good taste" tended to ignore. Kraus's and Loos's acutely critical attitude towards the Viennese tendency to ignore the moral dimension of art was shared by a small number of intensely serious intellectuals beyond their immediate circles. Its most intense expression in philosophy at the turn of the century was in the work of the frequently misunderstood Otto Weininger (1880-1903). 18 Weininger argued on the basis of Kant's categorical imperative that "logic and ethics are at bottom the same, they are no more than duty to oneself.... All ethics is possible only by means of the laws of logic, all logic is also ethical law. Not only virtue but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom is the task of men" (207). For Weininger it was precisely the narcissistic desirc to ignore the boundary between the Self and the world that characterizes immorality in the most basic sense. Just as passionately as
20
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
Kraus or Loos, Weininger argued that rational behavior is always a "will to value," 19 which is nothing other than respect for the inherent limits, i.e., integrity in Nature and in ourselves. The most important echo of this character-centered way of thinking was to come from another philosopher inspired by Kraus and Weininger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose Tractatus aimed at drawing the limits to language rigorously from within the very logical structures that make it possible, and that in tum with a view to discriminating between what can be meaningfully asserted in order to put an end once and for all to squabbles about what is morally worthwhile and simply letting 20 what is-or is not-worthwhile show itself as such. After 1912 even the painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918), who had previously pandered to the tastes of wealthy young men for semi-pornographic "art", 21 tended to become increasingly aware that his true task as a an artist was to come to grips with the Viennese "value vacuum" by utilizing the drawing technique that he had taken over from Rodin for capturing the loneliness and alienation of those women who were reduced to sex objects in the Viennese "value vacuum." Although conventional cultural history has scarcely come to realize the fact, Austria's greatest poet, Georg Trakl, was also very much part of this group. Converted from aestheticism to Dostoevskian Christianity, Trakl confronted the "inverted world" in what he termed a godless, cursed century by turning its poetic language against itself in much the same way that Schiele's mature drawings turned pornography into powerful social criticism. Devising stunningly beautiful images with full command of all of the pictorial and musical resources that modem writers after Rimbaud and Baudelaire had at their disposal, he would suddenly transform them, not into other symbols, but into an experience of emptiness and nausea as if to parody the Gesamtkunstwerk. 22 His wholly unconventional syntax, once confused with primitivism and incompetence, later with Expressionist pathos, was in fact the ultimate critique of that inverted world that was Viennese society. The constellation of values that binds these figures together could rightly be called critical modernism. Here it is necessary to make a very important distinction: the rejection of naturalism and social commitment that was heralded by Hermann Bahr under the title of "die Modcrnc" has virtually nothing to do with "die Moderne" in the· sense or the project of Enlightenment. Indeed, there is much to he suid for the thesis that the Viennese "Modcrne," that irrational
The Critical Modernism of a Viennese Composer
21
"nervous romanticism" or "mysticism of nerves" 23 and narcissistic glorification of ephemeral psychic states which the Viennese "Modeme" cultivated, is in fact more postmodem than modern. In that sense the Viennese "Moderne" has rightly been termed "conservative modemism," 24 since it pandered to rather than challenged, conventional "good taste." What, then, should we understand by "critical modernism"? In general the figures who can be subsumed under that category were all deeply disturbed by the way in which it was possible to "get high" on culture in Old Vienna. Critical modernism in its disparate forms was a strategy for combating the sort of narcissistic solipsism that was associated with the Viennese religion of art. The critical modernists considered that the aesthetes had encapsulated themselves into a dream world of subjective states (jrissons) with the help of a post-Wagnerian art that was as theatrical as it was monumental. If Viennese "modernism" anxiously awaited the "shock of the new," the critical modernists remained skeptical. They did not reject innovation in the arts or philosophy, rather they qucstiot1cd the value of novelty rigorously on the basis of an immanent crit iqur of the logical structures that made achievement in the various uris possible, Hermann Broch made an effort to capture what is csst•ntinl to this attitude toward culture in an essay of 1913, which was only published after his death, "Notes Towards a Systematic Aesthetics": All art... strives for the extension of its medium. That end must also be its fulfillment; it must give art all its methods .... The work of art can only follow "the lt~w or illlll'r necessity" .. .in that law lies [its] unity... balance... universality.... Style, the concise ~~x pression of balance, will [thus] be vanquished and with it ornament. The crystal evupo· rates. Color and tone exude from their own laws and become liberated .... Aesthetic formulae dissolve into ethereal spirituality and sail away. 25 ·
For Broch and the critical modernists reduction of art to its medium, poetry to words or painting to colors (Kandinsky) is nothing other than a radical reconsideration of the limits of expression rooted in concern for both the integrity of the artifact and that of the artist. It moves away from monumentality and theatricality in the direction of the miniature and the everyday. Critical modernism challenges the spectator, the listener, the audience to seek the beauty of poetry in the order and sounds of words, that of painting in the structure immanent in the very juxtaposition of colors, rather than in what words or colors represent. Thus critical modernists have had a way of being misunderstood or neglected, so demanding are their works.
The Critical Modernism of a Viennese Composer
22
2.1
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
In fact they made art out of posing problems for their public rather than solving them. Thus the sense for problems in the references to Strindberg, Weininger, and above all Kraus in the preface to the Harmonielehre provides us with critical clues about Schoenberg, namely, that he numbered himself among the sober minority who were not content to participate in a "cheerful apocalypse" (jrohlichen Apokalypse, Brach) or a "flashy downfall" (jarbenvollen Untergang, Csokor) as were typical representatives of the Viennese "Moderne" such as Hermann Bahr and "Jung Wien" or even Arthur Schnitzler in some of his more frivolous moods. Like Kraus, he was not at all opposed to radical innovation in art; and like Kraus, he was not prepared to accept novelty for its own sake nor could he tolerate the Viennese penchant for confusing theater with theatricality. In their rejection of avant-gardism Kraus and Schoenberg were not anti-modernists but critical modernists. Indeed, there is much to be said for the thesis that our most abiding cultural legacy from Old Vienna is just this critical attitude to avant-gardism, and indeed to modernity itself that distinguishes, say, the great Austrian writers from Kraus and Robert Musil down to Peter Handke and Thomas Bernhard. It is less that these writers want to reject modernity for postmodernity than that they want to understand what is healthy and what is sick in each in the sense that their prime concern is with the integrity of their culture-or the lack of it. Rather than confront the double standard on a broad "moralistic" front, they concentrate upon their own metier as a subject for immanent critique and the seemingly innocuous detail in which the devil lurks. In any case, from the start there was no doubt in anybody's mind in Vienna, including Arnold Schoenberg's, that Karl Kraus was the undisputed leader of the movement of moral protest of "critical modernism"against what Schoenberg termed laziness. To understand what is meant by that term more specifically we should take a look at the 1910 polemical essay, "Heine and the Consequences" which Kraus directed against his archenemy, Hermann Bahr and "Jung Wien." 26 In good Aristotelian fashion, Kraus seeks to characterize lack of ,culture (!JildunR or paideia) as arising from two extremes, which he ith.:ntilks as typkally German and french respectively. For the Germun\._ whu urc dcfl~nsclcss in the race of matter, art becomes a tool,
for the French, who are equally defenseless in the face of form, life· becomes something merely ornamental. The danger to Viennese culture after Heine (really after Bahr's sojourn in Paris) is mindless imitation of French literary models (in particular the feuilleton or cultural essay) which are simply foreign to the German language nnd can only be wielded by a few Germans of great talent like the l.hen much-admired Heine. To grasp the point of Kraus's attack we must get a clear idea of just what the feuilleton was all about, for in his eyes it was the epitome of everything morally dubious in Viennese culture. Carl Schorske, has given us the best description of the art of the feuilleton: The feuilleton writer, an artist in vignettes, worked with those discrete detuils and episodes so appealing to the nineteenth century's taste for the concrete. But he ~0\l(.thl to endow his material with color drawn from his imagination. The subjective responNt' of the reporter or critic to an experience, his feeling-tone, acquired clear primm:y ovr1 the matter of his discourse. To render a state of feeling became the mode of flliiiHIIul i111o1 a judgment. Accordingly, in the feuilleton writer's style, the adjectives ~·n~ulli·d lhr nouns, the personal tint virtually obliterated the contours of he object of disi'IIIIINt' 11
Schorske's description leaves no doubt about the problcnwtk 1111, lure of the very form. In a culture like Old Vienna's in which nrt Willi becoming a sort of religion the form could exercise un uttructioll that was as fatal as it was powerful upon young aesthetes thut confirmed them in their narcissism rather than challenged it.. Jnuna hnlll' grosse Pathosscenen im Au ge--es schloss gerade die Handlung aus (vcrlcgtc sic vor den An fang oder hinter die Scene). Das Wort Drama ist dorischer Herkun ft: und nurh dorischem Sprachgebrauch bedeutet es "Ereigniss", "Geschichtc", beide Wortc in hieratischem Sinne. Das alteste Drama stellte die Ortslegende dar, die "heilige Geschichte", auf der die Griindung des Cultus ruhte (-also kcin Thun, sondcm cin Geschehen: dran heisst im Dorischen gar nicht 'thun').(KSA 6, 32(notc])
Here Nietzsche alludes to the fact that the plots of ancient dramas were well-known to their audience. For that reason, what was presented on the stage could never be a new, surprising turn of events (i.e., a frisson). The point of the play was to express the inexorability of the happening in the most eloquent terms. Ancient dramas, we should remember, were performed during festivals in competition with one another. Since everyone knew the mythos or story from the start, excellence attached to how the story was told. The pathos and the celebrated catharsis were in the very order of the words. This sort of play, with an audience entirely consisting of critics (as Oscar Wilde was wont to point out) had to treat its audience as intelligent (it is noteworthy that the ancient spectator was, therefore, in crucial respects more like a judge than a modern spectator).
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If these classical standards are normative (as the author of The Birth of Tragedy took them to be), then Wagner fails to meet them for just those reasons which perfect Wagnerites take to be the zenith of his artistic achievement: for creating dreams of redemption. Nietzsche's disappointment with Wagner was rooted in his early enthusiasm for the idea that, "dramatic art consists in a kind of transformation of the self, the merging of the self with the souls and bodies of other characters," 8 in the words of one commentator. The problem was that Wagner increasingly came to construe this transformation as mere theatricality. Thus, the danger that Nietzsche saw in Wagner, his decadence, his "modernism," his sickness, is the danger of the empty gesture, of style for its own sake. Nietzsche presents this as a loss of unity: "The whole is no longer living at all. It is aggregate, calculated, artificial, artifact" ("Das Ganze lebt tiberhaupt nicht mehr: es ist zusammengesetzt, gerechnet, ktinstlich, ein Artefakt," KSA 6, 27). On a superficial reading one sees Nietzsche lamenting a kind of loss, but on closer examination he is really complaining about just that lack of proportion that the ancient Greeks, above all Aristotle, revered as the source of all beauty, form: "The word becomes sovereign and jumps right out of the sentence" ("Das Wort wird souverain und springt aus dem Satz hinaus"), he wrote in a mood resembling Karl Kraus, 9 "the sentence encroaches upon and obscures the sense of the page, the page lives at the expense of the whole" ("der Satz greift tiber und verdunkelt den Sinn der Seite, die Seite gewinnt Leben auf Unkosten des Ganzen," KSA 6, 27). This is the temptation which Wagner and modernity represent. But, to reiterate, for Nietzsche the problem is less one of eradicating an "unworthy" ideal then it is of monitoring these tendencies in ourselves-and perhaps in that very act overcoming them. However, it is quite possible to object here that this loss of a sense of context is, indeed, a "modernist" trait, but that it is by no means a fault in Wagner's work. Indeed the lack of unity that Nietzsche bewails in Wagner's oeuvre would seem to be more characteristic of his own works than it is of those of his former friend. But this is precisely Nietzsche's point. What presents itself as organic in Wagner, i.e., the unity of music and drama, is hardly that; whereas what presents itself as arbitrary and disjointed in his work has a strict logical coherence when one obtains the proper perspective upon it, i.e., when we come to see his philosophizing as just the sort of "selfknowledge" in the sense/()f self-criticism that he finds at once char-
Saint Offenbach's Postmodernism
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acteristic of true philosophizing and wanting in Wagner. Here again, it might be objected that Nietzsche puts too much stock in Wagner's "theories" and self-descriptions and too little on his actual achievements as a composer. Perfect Wagnerites suggest, to the contrary, that Wagner's "theories" are at best misleading and at worst bombastic misrepresentations of his compositional practice-and ultimately a "bore." 10 Doubtless, this is true. Unfortunately, Wagner himself is responsible for their misapprehensions inasmuch as he always did his level best to present his writings, his music, and himself as all of a piece. Little wonder that his compositional achievements have been so difficult to extricate from his pedantry and bigotry. In short, Nietzsche rightly portrays him as a Cagliostro insofar as he did his best to make himself into a cause, i.e., in his personal conduct as in his writing he forced people to take a stand for or against him (which even the unmusical Marx could not avoid). The Case of Wagner is all about the deleterious effects of Wagner's self-mythologizing, i.e., with everything that today's Pcrfl'cl Wagnerites, can with some justification, write off as irrelevant IU forming an estimate of Wagner's true brilliance. But we should hear in mind that they can do this because World War II did as much to discredit Wagner's "idea" that we now have the luxury of evalunt· ing him on those purely musical criteria according to which certain gifts simply must be recognized. Nietzsche was among the few to have intimations of this during the nineteenth century. Moreover, it is important to recognize that the two sides in this debate have incommensurable and incompatible concepts of just what constitutes Wagner's life work. Thus, the debate over Wagner's stature must be interminable. The hard truth is that the greatest composer of operas between Mozart and Janacek (excepting Mussorgsky) was a pomp~ ous anti-Semitic mystagogue-and that the relationship between Wagner's life and work is such that it permits both identification and separation.'' And it is precisely because Nietzsche recognized that you can ignore neither the one nor the other that he insisted that Wagner was a phenomenon that you have to encounter in order to master. There can be little doubt that Nietzsche did less than full justice to Wagner's supreme achievements as a composer in his efforts to come to grips with Wagner the Cause. His ironic exaltation of Bizet at Wagner's expense was a strategic error in this effort. He knew this. Had he chosen Offenbach as his foil for Wagner, as he should have, both the ensuing debate and Offenbach's current repu-
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Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
tation would be very different. What follows is an attempt to redress that misdemeanor. Why oppose Bizet to Wagner? If there is a logic to that choice, it would seem to be linked to Nietzsche's (highly ironic) allegation that Wagner is an elaborately disguised Parisian decadent: Would you believe it? Wagner's heroines, as soon as you brush against their heroic skin, are all similar to the point of being confused with Madame Bovary. Conversely, Haubert could have translated his heroine into Scandinavian or Carthaginian and then offered her to Wagner as a libretto. Indeed, Wagner does not seem to have been interested in anything other than the preoccupation's of the little Parisian decadents, except that the scale was different. Always five steps away from the hospital! Doubtless, entirely modem, entirely metropolitan problems one and all! Wiirden Sie es glauben, dass die Wagnerischen Hero!nen sammt und sonders, sobald man nur erst den heroischen Balg abgestreift hat, zum Verwechseln Madame Bovary ahnlich sehn!-wie man umgekehrt auch begreift, es Haubert freistand, seine Heldin in's Skandinavische oder Karthagische zu iibersetzen und sie dann, mythologisirt, Wagnem als Textbuch anzubieten. Ja, in's Grosse gerechnet, scheint Wagner sich fiir keine andem Probleme interessiert zu haben, als die, welche heute die kleinen Pariser decadents interessiren. Immer fiinf Schritte weit vom Hospital! Lauter ganz mod erne, Iauter ganz grosssUidtische Probleme! zweifeln Sie nicht daran! (KSA 6, 34)
It is all too easy to overlook both the irony and the complexity of Nietzsche's claims here. First of all, there is the sting of identifying the Bard of the Teutonic Urwald as fundamentally French and urban in his thinking. Secondly, there is a rejection of the confusion between realism and romanticism that he finds in French letters. Thirdly, he takes this confusion to be linked to the narcissism and "neurasthenia" of the French decadents. Fourthly, he identifies this with Wagner's art. But, if it is all too easy to overlook the complexity of these claims, it is equally easy to overlook the fact that it is the very brilliance of Wagner's music that obscures their truth. Had Nietzsche been a bit more generous in his recognition of Wagner the composer, he might have been more successful in convincing people of the seductive dangers of Wagner the Cause. Be that as it may, in his very last work, the little anthology from his own earlier works, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, which he assembled in order to prove that, for all his earlier enthusiasm, he had also expressed reservations about Wagner for some time; in short, to show that his attack in The Case of Wagner was not merely a matter of an abrupt, arbitrary change of heart, he clarified his concept of dectJdence in terms of ~contrast between Flaubert and Goethe:
Saint Offenbach's Postmodernism
127
With reference to artists of all kinds this is my chief distinction: is hatred of life or abundance oflife the well-spring of creativity here? In Goethe, for example, abundance became creative, in Haubert hatred: Haubert a new edition of Pascal, but as artist with the following instinctual basis for his judgments: "Haubert is always hateable, the person is nothing, the work of art is everything ..." He tortured himself when he wrote entirely as Pascal tortured himself when he thought-they experienced both unselfishly.. .'selflessness' the principle of decadence, the will to an ending in art as in ethics. In Hinsicht auf Artisten jeder Art bediene ich mich jetzt dieser Hauptunterscheidung: ist hier der Hass gegen das Leben oder der Oberfluss an Leben schopferisch geworden? In Goethe zum Beispiel wurde der Uberfluss schopferisch, in Haubert der Hass: Haubert, eine Neuausgabe Pascal's, aber als Artist, mit dem Instinkt-Urtheil aus dem Grunde: 'Haubert est toujours ha!ssable, l'homme n'est rien, !'oeuvre est tout.' Er torturirte sich, wenn er dichtete, ganz wie Pascal sich torturirte, wenn er dachte-sic empfanden beide un-egoistisch .. .' Selbstlosigkeit'- das decadence-Princip, der Wille zum Ende in der Kunst sowohl wie in der Moral. (KSA 6, 426f.)
Previously in the same surprising passage he identified the opposite of decadence as that tragic knowledge, which attained philosophical expression in Hume, Kant, and Hegel, only to be perverted in the world-denying pessimism of Schopenhauer and Wagner. Whatever the merits of Nietzsche's view of Flaubert and Pascal, or even Parisian decadence, he is here, in fact, contrasting the genuinely tragic, because heroic, pessimism of the Greek tragedians: humuns learn only through suffering, with the Manichean's response to the imperfection of a "fallen" world: the flip-flop between abject submission and the yearning for transcendence. In fact he is taking the latter to task for wanting to abolish struggle and conflict from life through creating the illusion that we can "explain" its incvitability-"heiligste Mione, hochste Not"-philosophically and represent that inevitability in art. Moralism-and here there can be little doubt about the Hegelian origins of the distinction between moralist and philosopher in The Case of Wagner-and decadence seek an ending to or a solution for, indeed, a redemption from, the sadness that the conflicts of an Antigone or a Hamlet carry with them. But this would be nothing less than a redemption from being human. In the end, the moralist, who tries to fathom the meaning-or meaninglessness-of life, and the decadent, who presents that scenario on the stage, confuse sadness with the irresolubility of a choice that is no less inevitable, and, what is worse, in doing so create just the kind of illusion that they would abolish. It is important to grasp here that Nietzsche's problem is less the result of disappointment with Wagner than of the kinds of surface confusions that can easily be
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made between these very different views. This also helps to explain why his descriptions of Wagner come so close to self-descriptions. He is suggesting that the reader will only get clear about these matters by making some subtle discriminations. Such is the tantalizing pathos of modernism. We neglect at our peril the contrast with Goethe that figures so centrally in this discussion; for Nietzsche is well-known for his reverence for the old Goethe of Eckermann's Conversations (the greatest German book in Nietzsche's eyes). Indeed, his reference to Goethe provides us with a crucial clue to his enthusiasm for Bizet but also with a hint as to why he should have been yet more enthusiastic for Offenbach than he was. Wagner's defenders in the controversy aroused by Nietzsche have often pointed to the fact that his attacks on Wagner have less to do with his music than with the plots of his libretti, especially that of Parsifal, for which his music was composed. Indeed, some Perfect Wagnerites think that Nietzsche's argument is on that account beside the point, since Wagner's libretti are little more than "excuses" for musical setting. They take Tristan as a good case in point: singing is of the essence, what is sung, the specific words themselves (often wholly unintelligible as they are sung on the stage) are secondary.12 The argument advanced here is that, while this objection is wholly correct in principle, it misses Nietzsche's point, namely that Wagner himself put the debate on the footing that Nietzsche found it in what he presented as his efforts to develop a genuinely German opera. This brings us, finally, to Bizet; for the point of the contrast is at least in part to emphasize that Bizet in fact accomplished what Wagner set out to do without either Wagner's histrionics or his sentimentality. In selecting Bizet as a foil to Wagner at least three considerations played a role. First, Bizet was, of course, French. So Nietzsche's preference for him over Wagner was yet another clear-and clearly ironic-indication of his preference for things French at the expense of things German: "I believe exclusively in French education and consider everything else that passes for education in Europe misconceived not to mention German education" (ich glaube nur an franzosische Bildung und halte Alles, was sich sonst in Europa 'Bildung' nennt, fiir Missverstiindniss, nicht zu reden von der deuts,chen Bildung, KSA 6, 285). Secondly, and most significantly, on Nietzsche's view, in tk symptoms as expressions of repressed sexuality, but this disinclination is symmetrically aligned with an inclination to accept those very modes of explanation. What we might reject as "dirty" on the basis of conventional mores or on religious grounds might just as well be considered sufficiently fashionable (think of the cachet attached to being psychoanalyzed in France in the 70s), flattering ("a person of great sexual needs") or titillating (to the puritan) at a personal level that our prejudice against Freudian explanation is but the other side of the coin of a certain fascination with them: a way of finding ourselves "deep" and "exciting," which is not otherwise available to us. In the end, Wittgenstein suggests that psychoanalysis is a mode of persuasion according to which one mythology, i.e., one way of weaving words and actions together comes to replace another. In these circumstances he raises the question: how are we to know when we should stop reinterpreting our behavior? The Freudian therapeutic criterion is effectiveness, i.e., after therapy the neurotic functions better in society than before. However, given the considerations Wittgenstein has brought to bear upon the interpretation of these results, successful therapy does not entail evidence that Freudian
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theory is true, i.e., in the way that laboratory experiments do in the physical sciences. In the end Wittgenstein is highly skeptical with respect to Freud's claims but at the same time most impressed with the practice of his therapeutic methods, which are so successful in leading us to replace one self-image with another by adjusting our behavior to a less flattering image of ourselves: "Freud's idea: in madness the lock is not destroyed, only altered: the old key can no longer unlock it, but it could be opened by a differently constructed key" (C+V, 33). Psychoanalysis is the transaction according to which we shape the new key; yet, at the same time this view of how we manage to restore psychic balance and effectiveness to those who have lost it provides the crucial clue to what has gone wrong in the first place: "Madness need not be regarded as an illness. Why shouldn't it be seen as a sudden-more or less sudden--change of character?" (C+ V, 54). This description surely fits some cases of religious or political conversion quite well. For example, certain women have reported just such a sense of loss of contact with reality upon becoming aware that they were no longer prepared to play the roles cast for them in patriarchal society. 3 Why, we may ask, should these sorts of change of character-if that is indeed what they are-be so difficult to observe? The answer is, in part, suggested by Wittgenstein's emphasis in the passage cited that the transition is extended over time in such a way that it is and is not sudden. Generally, we fail to perceive the basis of our own action and a fortiori our own character because it is bound up with the particular constellations of speaking and acting (Wittgenstein's way of describing "language games"), which itself has to have a certain mythological character such that the very fact that these constellations through which we have been socialized constitute our very character and on that account must be beyond our own ability to see. The idea sounds complicated but the principle is simple and familiar: if I need contact lenses to read, their very instrumentality in the act of reading prevents me from seeing them as I read. So from the first moments of our existence we are learning modes of acting (i.e., already in the womb) which are later complemented by principles of comparison as we learn language, whose features remain obscure to us because, like the contact lenses in the example, they are always before us in a way that we cannot observe (i.e., as the basis of observation itself). I must know my name,, that of my immediate family, my address of long standing,
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etc., if I know anything at all. Conversely, to make a mistake about any of these things (which is not the same as not to know them, i.e., the latter could be the result of misinformation [for example, I need not necessarily know my legal name if I am, say, normally called by something else], amnesia or brain damage) is to be in a position where our general competence to function as human beings can legitimately be questioned. Here as elsewhere, we should not be misled by the homeliness of Wittgenstein's examples; for he is talking about nothing less than our very identity. For that reason the example of the housewife-become-feminist who comes to question her sanity is altogether continuous with Wittgenstein's examples of people who suddenly fail to be able to present basic data about themselves correctly. Thus the woman in question, after having learned to define herself in terms of patriarchal social practices, gradually experiences an identity crisis as she begins concretely to seck alter·~ natives to the social practices through which she has been enculturated: '"It is high time for us to compare these phenomena with something different' -one might say-I am thinking, e.g., of mental illnesses" (C+ V, 55), writes Wittgenstein. On Wittgenstcin 's view of the way that our very capacity to think is constituted by modes of acting and comparing, which are drilled into us (abgerichtet), this sort of development is hardly one which can occur consciously. This drilling (Abrichtung) produces a quasi-mythical "logical grammar" in us, which is the result of learning to speak and act as we learn the rules of certain games simply by playing them and not by learning any explicit rules. 4 However the implicit character of what we have learned in the process of becoming enculturated implies that the most significant problems that we experience with respect to our identity will occur when the unspoken basis of our practices shifts somehow, with the result that we become enigmatic to ourselves to paraphrase St. Augustine. Natural disasters have this effect upon societies, e.g., droughts which transform the environment, and individuals, e.g., the death of a friend, as was the case with Augustine. On this view of the role of comparisons in constituting normalcy in human behavior it becomes plausible as to why a poet like Friedrich Holderlin or Georg Trakl, who cultivates unconventional comparisons intensely can change his own character in such a way as to call his sanity into question. Because this is possible, we ought to be most reticent to attribute to them or to the housewife-become-feminist some sort of "degeneracy."
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These are not cases that Wittgenstein directly discusses but they are, nevertheless, the sorts of issues that his observations aim at raising. His Dostoevskian remark, "Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness" (C+V, 13) would seem to be an important clue in this direction. One thing is certain: he was a lifelong student of character and character-building and as such his remarks about character are hardly casual ones. He seems anxious to defend a view of character change that would at once account for its subjectively earthshaking, shattering nature but at the same time leaves the door open to an objectively protracted period over which our modes of acting and comparing gradually shift. It was no less crucial to him that the question of whether or not the transition represented a positive development be left open. This attitude is clearly connected with his conviction that the religious picture of human nature as basically ill was more profound than the Enlightenment's picture of it as imperfect (C+ V, 45). Religion is for Wittgenstein the source of color and vitality in life; it is what makes life worth living. For this reason he was anxious not to prejudge the significance of any given development either in society or in individual life. If we are to be absolutely correct, we must simply describe the Before and the After of personal and cultural developments with great precision (L+C, 7-11; C+V, 55). The main tendency in our society, one that penetrates all aspects of our culture, is to view all development as something good by its very nature, a view that Wittgenstein looked upon with scorn. Like Tolstoy, he considered that it was more the pride and folly of the modern worldview than insight which tempted us to such judgments. 5 In any case, in his confrontation with Freud, Wittgenstein wanted to emphasize that Freud's techniques for bringing his patients to a new, less problematic, perspective on their own behavior should not be confounded with the truth of, say, his claims for the Oedipal account of neuroses. Wittgenstein insists that the only legitimate consequences of successful therapy are more general and neutral with respect to the value of personality transformations of a particular sort. He sought in these transformations, rather, clues to the natural history of personality. As R. D. Laing would later do 6 he questioned what "normal" could possibly mean with respect to human personality. 7 This questioning should be seen as continuous with one of his central notions about the nature of rulefollowing, namely, that the role of guessing and inventing ways of following rules leave it an open question whether a rule has been
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219
followed correctly. What is in accordance with the rule and what is an exception cannot be set down once and for all. In other words, legitimate innovation is real but by its very nature we should not expect to develop a theory of it. Be that as it may, Wittgenstein's confrontation with Freud yields, then, the notion that human beings can radically transform their modes of self-understanding. Psychoanalysis is, in fact, a kind of hermeneutic technique. It provides a new mythology in the sense of a new scenario for living, which is more effective than the old one but which is not, in Wittgenstein's view any better grounded. Having said that, we must now take up the question of the therapeutic treatment of the questions of traditional philosophers such as G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell: I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know thalthut \ a tree," pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, nnd I tt•ll him: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy.'" (OC, 46)
It is always important to read Wittgenstein with the utmost curl'. Here he is not actually saying that the philosopher, in this case Ci.l~. Moore, 8 is mad but that he appears mad on the basis of what hl' wants to say about the world. The point seems at first trivial: nobody says what is obviously the case as if it were some sort of discovery. Who goes around saying with conviction, "I know that my name is Allan" (i.e., when it really is and always has been), "I know that I have a body," "I know that I am a male"? What we all know needs no assertion. However, this does not hold for philosophers, who want systematically to forget what everybody knows: "God gmnt the philosopher insight into what lies in front of everyone's eyes" (C+V, 63). Wittgenstein, far from finding this assertion merely silly, is fascinated by what leads the philosopher to make this assertion. What does it really signify? For traditional philosophers the "depth" of philosophy consists precisely in that justification of the obvious. Wittgenstein turns this around in an interesting and important way. What he discovers by questioning just why normal people find these assertions so silly is just what Descartes wanted to find with his systematic doubting: unshakable certainty. We do not have to go around asserting that we know our names, etc., because our actions show clearly what we know and do not know about the world at this obvious level. Going around repeating "I know my name is Allan," with a view to establishing certainty with respect to that proposition
220
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
is like reading several copies of today's newspaper in order to make sure that what I read in the first one is correct. It does not take the argument any further. What is obvious, is obvious. To assert it is every bit as silly as to deny it. This symmetry plays a great role in establishing meaning in Wittgenstein's philosophical practice. He insists that the seemingly meaningful sentence "I know my name is Allan" is exposed as meaningless when I contrast it with its negation "I do not know that my name is Allan." The assumption is standard in logic, but Wittgenstein employs it as a way of reducing covert nonsense to overt nonsense in philosophical matters in a wholly novel way. What makes the philosopher seem insane to the servant girl is this propensity to make pronouncements about truth where mistakes are ruled out in normal circumstances by the very nature of our practices. If I could genuinely be mistaken about what I am normally called or where I have been living, there would be no point here. However, the very inconceivability of mistakes here tells us important things about our practices and about the way philosophers fail to understand them. Thus Wittgenstein is actually calling our attention simultaneously (1) to the logical complexity of everyday mistakes (presumably taking his cues from Freud here too; for we do know that he was familiar with the latter's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life) 9 and (2) to the fact that part of that logical complexity entails the idea that mistakes are only possible where there are recognized procedures whose order has been violated. Mistakes are only possible if we truly intend what we do, if this intention is a matter of expectation and if some aspect of that expectation turns out to be empirically misconceived. But these expectations rest upon certain unshakable foundations. Philosophers tend to get upset (positively or negatively) about the idea of unshakable foundations to knowledge usually because they conceive those foundations in terms of absolutely true propositions. This is precisely what Wittgenstein is not doing. What is absolutely true, i.e., my "knowledge" of my name; not moral absolutes, which are an entirely different matter, is nonsensically and unsayably true. This is because what is obvious in the sense I have used the term is part of the framework according to which the community in which I have been socialized tests truth and falsity. When I am no longer operating within that framework, members of that community will certainly question my sanity, and I for my part will certainly have problems with my identity. What
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belongs to the framework is like the Paris meter in that it is (or was) used as the standard of measurement and for that very reason cannot itself be meaningfully measured. Because it is impossible to measure the Paris meter (i.e., metrically), it is meaningless for us to assign a length to it. On this view both metaphysical dogmatism and skepticism are equally nonsensical. The former wants to assert foundational "true-for-all-time" propositions; whereas the latter wants to deny them. They end up on the same level despite themselves. Both are profoundly mistaken. Wittgenstein on the contrary, wants simply to show that our experience is as it is because we do take certain things, i.e., our knowledge of our own name and address, etc., to be obvious. However, these most important things we "know" do not count as knowledge. Philosophers from Descartes to Russell want to discuss these matters as if they were theoretical or propositionul knowledge; Wittgenstein wants to put an end to the resulting nonsense. His mode of doing so he describes as a set of therapies. However, the therapies he practices are very curious ones. "It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solw their problems" (C+V, 75). If we consider Wittgenstein's central claim about mental disordrr, namely, his statement that it involves new modes of comparison, we can begin to see the point of this seemingly curious assertion. Like the mentally disturbed, the traditional metaphysician no longer takes what is obvious to all as such because he has a new and unusual point of view, a new grammar, according to which there must be something exotic and sublime about what people normally take to be obvious and uninteresting. This is what is "sick" in philosophy (there are strong points of comparison with the James of both Pragmatism and The Varieties of Religious Experience here). However, Wittgenstein, unlike the psychoanalyst, insists that this "sickness" can only be "cured" by the philosopher himself, i.e., in a kind of self analysis: "A philosopher is a man who has to cure many intellectual diseases in himself before he can arrive at the notions of common sense." (C+V, 44). But what is the way to this self-overcoming that is more insane yet than traditional philosophy? "Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than constructing fictitious ones" (C+V, 74). The therapies, which the philosopher administers to himself, then, are a matter of constructing fictive natural histories, as Wittgenstein puts it in the Philosophical Investigations, not as thought-experiments (with which
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they bear a superficial similarity) but as a way of obtaining an overview of how our normal set of concepts functions by contrast (PU, II, XII). To do this Wittgenstein was convinced that philosophers would have to suppress their professional urge to be clever (geistreich-a word he also applied to Freud as we have seen) or profound in order to formulate stupid (dumm, C+ V, 76) questions, which bring what everybody knows without saying it into sharp contrast with an imaginative impossibility: if we speak of "white hot" why don't we speak of "brown hot," too?'' (OCL, 1, 34). This is what he understands when he writes of philosophy as a kind of lyric art (Dichtung, C+V, 24), whose aim is to make a problem dissolve by exhibiting its origin to us from a wholly new angle (L+C, 27). However, we must bear in mind that the mode of comparison which gives us so much trouble is not merely a hypothesis but something similar to the conceptual framework of a mentally disturbed person, i.e., something which is constitutive of our very ways of acting and speaking. Therefore, the new diet of examples must be varied and striking to be able to win us away from deeply ingrained habits, habits that we don't simply have but habits that we are (on this point there is curious similarity with Gabriel Marcel's distinction between problem as something I have and mystery as something I am). Thus repetition plays a central role in Wittgenstein's therapeutic philosophizing; for we have to learn--or better as philosophers-we have to teach ourselves to see the landscape from many new points of view (PI, Foreword) other than the ones to which we are accustomed before, we get a grasp of its contours in all of their complexity. But what significance could all of this have for the practice of psychotherapy? There is of course no clear-cut answer. However, it is possible to make some suggestions. In many respects Wittgenstein's perspective on psychoanalysis would seem to bear resemblance to that of R. D. Laing. This is in part accurate, but we should not make too much of the point. Like Laing and others, Wittgenstein was critical of the ideological dimension of psychoanalysis and warns us to be wary of its seductive claims; on the other hand, he does not suggest an alternative. In any case, he is quite convinced that the way Freud went about bringing his patients to accept a new, less flattering picture of themselves was one form about which there was a great deal to learn. Wittgenstein's sense of the relationship between language and the world is clearly something to which anyone concerned with the
Wittgenstein on Madness, Mistakes, Metaphysics and Method
22~
mind should be sensitive. His view that language consists of an interweaving of words and actions is still a radical departure from most views of language. His denial that our experience is private is equally radical with respect to accepted views of mind. His insistence that we have to understand words in terms of deeds and vice versa is an important reminder about something we are all likely to forget in the face of structuralism and mentalism. The idea that language is not a neutral medium for describing the world but is part and parcel of a particular way of structuring the world-the idea that the limits of my language are the limits of my world-is also a notion that can have considerable heuristic value to those involved in restructuring shattered worlds. The same is true for the correlative notion that it is language which at once obscures as we]] as reveals the nature of my world. Similarly, the idea that the analyst is directly involved in a moral as well as a medical enterprise undcrscori.l'l/1, "Foundations of the Unity of Science," vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicn~o Press, 1951 ). For an up-to-date bibliography of the movement see Friedrich Stt1dler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis: Ursprung, Entwicklung und Wirkung des logi.l'l'ht'll Empirismus im Kontext (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997). The publications lmd colloquia of Stadler's "Institut Wiener Kries" in Vienna are the indispensable sources fur understanding the contemporary impact oflogical positivism. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London, 1958). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (OX· ford: Oxford University Press,1953), Part I is the most polished statement we have of his mature philosophical views. The literature on Wittgenstein has grown to n point that it is scarcely possible to obtain an overview. There are three Wittgenst.cin bibliographies but they are either sadly out of date or otherwise incomplete: Fron~ois LaPointe, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Comprehensive Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980), V.A. and S. G. Schankar, A Wittgenstein Bibliography (London: Routledge, 1986) and Peter Philipp, Bibliographie zur Wittgenstein-Uteratur, "Working Papers from the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen," no. 13 (Bergen: The Wittgenstein Archives, 1996). See Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin,loc. cit. Gordon P. Baker, "Verehrung und Verkehrung: Waismann and Wittgenstein" in Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, ed. C.G. Luckhardt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 280ff; cf. Ray Monk, The Duty O,·kcrs, Alexander, 'J4
rr 282
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
Duhem, Pierre, 159 Durer, Albrecht, 239 Dworkin, Andrea, 48 Ebner, Ferdinand, 75 art's purpose, 111-112 central thought of, 107 dialogue problems, 108 dialogue's first philosopher, 106 dialogue's philosophy, 107 intellectual fantasizing, 109-110 metanoia and, 111 monological existence concepts, 109 as religious thinker, 85 vs agreement, 108-109 vs Freud, 110 vs Strindberg, 111 vs Wagner, 103-104, 130 works of, 109-111 Ecstasy, 134-135 Ellis, Havelock, 48 Engelmann, Paul, feuilleton art and, 24 von Esterle, Max, 241 Ethics as aesthetics happiness defined, 229-231 interpretations of, 227-229 Trakl and, 226-227, 245 Wittgenstein and, 225-226 European culture cultural paradigms, 207-209 European Union's power, 210 history making approaches, 210-211 Leibnizian language projects, 198 liberalism vs modernism, 209-210 logical positivism and, 199-201 Mach's Newtonian physics project, 198 philosophy's role, 201 political climate, 201-202 rational vs modernism, 209-210 Russell's classic rationalism project, 198-199 • science revolution origins, 206 science unity, 207 Vienna Circle and, 197-198 Fackel, Die, (periodical), 18, 107 Fann, K. T., 167 Feuilleton art, defined, 23 von Ficker, Ludwig, 161, 231, 244 writings of, 107 Frank, 1osef, Vienna Circle and, 210
Index Frank, Philipp, Vienna Circle and, 210 Fraus, Karl critical modernism leader, 22 cultural integrity goals, 22 feuilleton art and, 23-24 public misunderstanding, 33-34 writing themes, 22-23 Frege, Gottlob, 187 .Leibnizian project, 198 Wittgenstein correspondences, 160161 Freud, Sigmund, 1, 210 psychology's future and, 51-52 Weininger's use of, 50 Wittgenstein relationship, 214-217
philosophy and Wittgenstein, 148149 questions to Mach, 151-152 scientific concept understanding, 152-153 simplicity questioned by, 151-152 Herzfeld, Marie, 79 Herzl, Theodor, mass movement of, 39 Hirschfeld, Magnus, 43, 48 Hitler, Adolf, 11 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, Vienna's treatment of, 27, 242 Holderlin, Friedrich, 217 Holderlin, Lieder, 112 Homosexuality biological theory, 43-44 hereditary explanation of, 44 Weininger and, 43-45 Husser!, Edmund, 51
Gellner, Ernest, Wittgenstein and, 147148, 165-166 Gerber, Artus, 61 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 44 Gould, Glenn, 15 Graves, Robert, writings of, 105 Gray, Dorian, I, 95, 183 Grieg, Edvard, 63 Grillparzer, Franz, Vienna description, 17 "Habsburg Myth," 239 Haecker, Theodor, 75 Halevy, Ludovic, 130, 137 Handke, Peter, cultural integrity goals, 22 Hanslick, Eduard music composition, 29-30 musical aesthetics, 29 newspaper critic, 29 Hanson, Norwood Russell, 165, 205 Hauer, Josef Matthias critics view of, 112 Klangfarblehre theory, 112 Haydn, Franz Joseph, 24 Vienna's treatment of, 28 Hertleb, Renate, 94-95 Hertz, Heinrich, 146 goals of, 172-173 grammar presentation, 152 mechanic axiomatization, 154-156 metaphysical problems, 149-150, 154 models of nature characteristics, 153154 Newton's physics and, 150-151
Ibsen, Henrik, 177 misconception reasons, 62-63 Weininger use of, 59 works of, 59-60 ltten, Johannes, 112
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James, William, 51 Janacek, Leos, 134 works of, 116 Jaspers, Karl, 42, 179 Jensen, Jprgen, 112 Jew. See Judaism Jodi, Friedrich, 48 Judaism cultural "Jewishness", 52-54 Mahler's choice of, 207-208 Offenbach and, 113, 131-132, 140141 Viennese values approval by, 208 Wagner's understanding of, 131-132 Weininger's attitudes, 38, 41-42 Kafka, Franz, 1 Kant, Immanuel autonomous human being, 176 change of heart achieving, 73-74 rationalist enterprise of, 71-72 Weininger's use of, 50-51 Kassner, Rudolf, 75 Key, Ellen, 79 Kierkegaard, Spren moral philosopher of, 74-75
283
narcissism analysis, 75 Klangfarblehre Theory, 112 Klimt, Gustav, 85 Klinger, Max, 94 Kokoschka, Oskar, 235-236 Kracauer, Siegfried, writing of, 113 Kraus, Karl, 1, 95, 183,209,235,235236 accomplishments of, 18 anti-Viennese, 2 aphorism development, 189-190 art's moral dimensions, 19 critical modernism and, 20-22 criticism of, 111 dialogue influencing, 106-107 Frankfurt School and, 113 Ibsen's philosophical variations, 8 I influence of, 185, 187-188 language role, 192-193 Loos and, 18-19 political views of, 18-19 style and, 191 Trakl and, 20 value origins of, 189 vs Lueger, 8-9 vs Offenbach, 115 Weininger and, 19-20 Wittgenstein and, 20 word play, 191-192 words used by, 134 works of, 105, 107 World War I causes, 19 writing transformation of, 18H Kuhn, Thomas, 37, 165, 205 Kulka, Julius, 77 Laing, R. D., 222 normalcy, 218-219 Language philosophy aphorisms, 190 humor role, 194 influence defined, 186 language role, 192-193 natural histories, 195-196 style, 191 Wittgcnstein influences, I HS-1 H7 wordplay, 191-192 Lecher, Ernst, 146 Lipsius, Justus, 210 Logical positivism, Wittgenstcin's nt.ti-
tudes, 209 I.omhmso, Ccsnrc
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.· I
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Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
criminals and, 45-46 normalcy criteria, 46 Weininger's influencing, 45 women assumptions by, 46-47 Loos, Adolf, 209, 235 art's moral dimensions, 19 functional architecture of, 18-19 Ibsen's philosophical variations, 81 public misunderstanding of, 33-34 revolution against revolutions, 19 Trakl friend of, 236-237 Lubitsch, Ernst, works of, 115 Lueger, Karl anti-Semite, 17 mass movement of, 39 vs Kraus, 8-9 Lukacs, Georg, 75
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McGowran, Jack, 56 McGuinness, Brian, 176, 185, 188-189 Mach, Ernst, 85 Hertz's simplicity questions, 151152 Newtonian physics project, 198 philosophy of science founder, 150 scientific concepts understanding, 152-153 vs models of nature, 153-154 vs Newton, 150 MacKinnon, Catherine, 48 Madness character and, 218-219 mental disorders, 221-222 mistakes vs truth, 220-221 psychoanalysis and, 214-217 vs mistakes, 213-214 Wittgenstein understanding, 219-220 Magris, Claudio, 239 Mahler, Gustav, 25 Catholic vs Jewish religion, 207-208 Schoenberg influences on, 32-33 Vienna's treatment of, 27 Makart, Hans, 242 Marcel, Gabriel, 42, 222 Marx, Karl, 210 Mauthner, Fritz, 227 Megerle,Ulrich, Vienna's rhetorical tradition, 8-9 Meilhac, Henri, 130, 137 Metanoia defjned, 111 purpose of, 111
Index vs Wagner, 132-133, 135-141 words used by, 134 works of, 111-117, 112 Ostwald, Wilhelm, 155, 172
Models of Nature, 153-154 Moore, G. E., 213,219 Morton, Fredrick, 2 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 24 Vienna's treatment of, 27-28 Mtiller, Robert, 236 Mtiller-Guttenbrunn, Adam, 76 Musical dramas Offenbach's use of, 134 Wagner's rejection of, 133-134 Musical theatre ambiguity in, 114-115 critics of, 113-114 purpose of, 113 See also Jacques Offenbach Musil, Robert, 1, 208 cultural integrity goals, 22 "other condition" defined, 90
Pears, David, 179 Peer Gynt critics today, 64 development of, 61-62 Norwegian's distortion of, 63 Weininger and, 64-65, 67-71 Peirce, C. S., 151 Popper, Sir Karl, 38, 81 Positivism, Enlightenment values and Wittgenstein, 147-148 Postmodernism Nietzsche's critique of, 120 Offenbach's place in, 120 Wagner's art, 121 Probst, Ferdinand, study by, 55 Prostitution preventing, 47 women victimless in, 47 Putnam, Hilary, 165
Nadherny, Sidonie, 188-189 Narcissistic cultures sexual activity in, 48-51 understanding difficulty of, 37 vs Weininger's attitudes, 38 Neuefreie Presse (newspaper), 24, 29 Neurath, Otto, 159, 197 Nietzsche, Fredrich, 85 art concept of, 123-124 Dionysian concepts of, 93 modernism criticism, 120 music drama and, 134 Schorske's views of, 93-94 Wagner's criticism, 121-122, 125127 Weininger's use of, 50 Offenbach, Jacques achievements of, 141-142 ambiguity function, 114-115 brilliance of, 117-118 composition mode of, 137 critics of, 113-114 Italian music links, 141-142 Jewish themes in, 113-114,131-132, 140-141 Jove concepts, 144-145 musical challenges of, 136-137 musical theatre and, 113 Nietzsche and, 144-145 repetition use by, 140 success criteria of, 145 understanding, 115-117
Quine, W. V. 0., 159 Rapture, composer's goal, 89 Ravel, Maurice, 131 Reinhardt, Max, 242 Remarque, Erich Maria, writings of, 105 Rosenstock-HUssey, Eugene, 106 Rosenzweig, Franz, 106 Rubek, Arnold, 63 Russell, Bertrand, 213, 219 classic rationalism project, 198-199 fundamental human knowledge, 205 Wittgenstein and, 147-148, 178-180
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Schiele, Egon, 20, 209 Schnitzler, Arthur, 6, 22 criticism of, 111 psychoanalysis and, 214-217 Schoenberg, Arnold, 112, 209 composition origins, 30-31 goals of, 35-36 Ibsen's philosophical variations, 81 identity concerns of, 34 Mahler influencing by, 32-33 moral renewal goals, 31-32 popular music and, 35 public misunderstanding of, 33-34
285
style vs idea, 30 Vienna's treatment of, 27-28 vs advant-gardism, 22 vs elitism, 34-35 works of, 30 Schonerer, Georg von, mass movement of, 39 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 146 art form value, 87-88 creative origins of, 87-88 music importance of, 87-88 philosophical foundations of, 8C1 Schorske, Carl, 3, 17 collective narcissistic ohservathlllH, 91-92 feuilleton art defined, 23 Gesamtkunstwerk origins, 1)].112 Nietzsche and, 92-93 Vienna's artist sources, '11-'1.2 Vienna's scenarios of, tJ2.11 I Vienna's view of, .H!-.\11 Schubert, Franz, 24 Scientific knowledge, I 'Ill Secession Exhibition, iiiiiHlllnnn• or, 101-103 Semprun, Jorgl!, 21 0 Sexuality Weininger nml, 42-4.1 Weininger's "idrnl type," 4H 'II Si'e tll.l'o llonHINexuullly; UINCIIIIIIIity Shaw, Bernard, M Strauss, Juhaun Jr.• 2. 2fl Strauss, Richard, 2'1, .i I, 242 Vienna's treat mcnt of, 27 Strindbcrg, August, 17 goals of, 117-118 intellectual fantasizing, 110-111 vs Ebner, Ill Weininger criticism, II I works of, 11 0 Swieten, Gerard van, 6 Swieten, Gottfried van, 7 Taylor, Charles, 165 Theresa, Maria, 6 Timms, Edward, 188-189 Toulmin, Stephen, 165, 205 Trakl, Georg, 181, 209 accomplishments of, 226 as critical modernist, 235 ethics commitment, 245
-1 286
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
"Habsburg myth, 239-241 Ibsen's philosophical variations, 81 Loos friend of, 236 normalcy and, 217 poetry's tone, 231 Salzburg influence, 241 silence element, 244 Vienna's life, 238 Viennese modernism, 238-239 Wittgenstein and, 226-227, 231 writings of, 20, 227, 233-235, 237238,242-243,245-246 Vergo, Peter, 95 Vienna art status in, 23 artist treatment in, 27 creative milieu in, 11-12 cultural creativity conditions, 12-13 factors explaining, 3-6 genius abusing, 1-3 lessons from, 12 literature richness of, 1-3 medical science of, 6 music of, 24-25 musical forms from, 25 musical heritage and, 7 musical past of, 24-25 re-Catholicization, 9-10 talent-fostering traditions, 6 theatricality of, 7-8 Ulrich's influences on, 8-9 "whole society" and, 10-11 Vienna Circle development from, 209 European union, 197-198 group phenomenology, 202-203 logical positivism goals, 199-201 origins of, 199 as outsider group, 209 political climate, 202 scientific investigation and, 201 vs metaphysics, 201 "wissenschaftliche, Weltauffassung," 199 Wittgenstein's disdain of, 182 Wittgenstein influencing, 203-204 Vienna's composers complacency challenging, 17-18 critical modernism and, 22-23 goals of, 16-1 7 Schoenberg and, 15-16, 24
Index
"value vacuum" and, 17 vs avant-gardism, 22 Wagner, Richard, 25 aesthetic creativity views, 86-87 aesthetic ideal, 90-91 artistry of, 135-136 Beethoven essay, 86, 98 biological nature and, 100-101 composer's role, 89-90 dreams importance of, 88-89 hearing vs seeing, 88 idea origins, 95-96 overlooking of, 85-86 unconscious life idea, 98-99 Vienna overlooking of, 85 views of, 97-98 vs Ebner, 96-97, 99-100 vs Offenbach's work, 113 Wagner's modernist traits, 124-125 animal sounds, 133 decadence, 127-128 ecstasy evoking, 135 musical dramas, 133-134 Nietzsche vs, 142-145 Offenbach's music vs Wagner, 131132 pathos of, 128 vs Offenbach, 135-142 Wagner's defenders, 128-131 Weber, Max, 89-90 Webern, Anton, 236 Weininger, Leopold, 55 Weininger, Otto, 17, 97,209 acceptance of, 54-56 achievement magnitude of, 76-77 Bahr's writings and, 79 bisexuality appeal in, 60-61 Chamberlain contributions to, 50 character-centered thinking, 20 cultural "Jewishness", 52-54 "eternal feminine" theme, 70-71 Freud contributions to, 50 homosexuality, 443-45 Ibsen's discussions, 80-81 Ibsen's philosophical dimensions finding, 62-63 "ideal type," 48-51 interpreting problems, 60 Judaism understanding of, 41-42 Kant's contributions to, 50-51 Kant's moral philosophy, 71-74
Kicrkcgnord nnd, 74-76 loving phenomenon and, 65-66 mental status of, 55 misunderstanding of, 19 modernity spirit of, 41 moral philosophy of, 52, 52-53 Nictr,sche contributions to, 50 Peer Gynt and, 61-62, 64-65,67-71 philosophical views of, 19 plasms theory, 51 psychology's future, 51-52 reactions to, 63-64 reception of, 54-55 sexuality, 42-43 sexuality views of, 47-48 social attitudes of, 38 social reform reasons, 42-43 theory of plasms, 51 understanding of, 61 women's view by, 40-41, 45 Whitehead, Alfred North, 199 Wien, Jung, 22 Wiener Moderne, 208 Wilde, Oscar, 28 Winch, Peter, 165 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 38, 209 character and, 147, 218 Enlightenment values, 147-148 ethics view of, 204 European historic approaches, 210211
fictive natural histories, 195 Frege's correspondences, 160-161 Freud's relationship, 214 Gellner and, 147-148, 165-166 Hertz's influence on, 158-160, 163165 Hertz's philosophy and, 148-149 humor's role, 194 Ibsen's philosophical variations, 81 influence of, 20, 186 Kraus influence, 185, 187-188, 195196 language limits, 20, 204-205 language philosophy, 185-187 language's role, 192-193
287
madness vs mistakes, 213-214 people influenced, 185-187 philosophical achievements of, 186187 philosophy conception of, 156-158 philosophy strategy, 193-195 on psychoanalysis, 214 public misunderstanding, 33-34 publications of, 20 Russell and, 147-148, 178-180 science beliefs, 148, 166-168 style of, 204 tractarian views, 160 Tractatus importance, 161-163 Trakl and, 231 understanding of, 219 Vienna's circle influence, 203-204 Wittgenstein's religious views Cartesianism critics vs, 180-181 criminal's world in, 167-167 ethics and, 176-180 Hertz and, 172-1 74 origins of, 182-183 philosophical notebooks of, 174-175 philosophical views of, 179-180 philosophy of, 171-172 questioning of, 174-175 religious origins, 181-182 science vs, 172 self vs world, 175-176 vs twentieth-century philosophy, 171 vs war, 174-175 wartime notebooks, 178 Wolf, Hugo, 2, 25 Women education for, 40 "eternal feminine" theme, 70-71 Lombroso's assumptions on, 46-47 prostitution, 4 7 Weininger's emancipation views, 4041,45 See also Prostitution Zeiller, Ottmar, 243 Zettel, 194-195 Zweig, Stefan, 40, I 05