I’m launched on a Wittgenstein project. I thought it was about time I knew more about him and his work than the odd anecdote and the quotation beloved by English teaching theorists: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” 

Any Wittgensteinian folks out there with words of advice? All thoughts welcome.

I’m easing my way in with two great guides: the biographer Ray Monk and the prof of Poetics, Marjorie Perloff. I’m already intrigued by all the paradoxes of his life.

As a pandemic project, Perloff produced the first-ever English translation of Wittgenstein’s wartime diaries from the years 1914-1916.  

In 1914 Wittgenstein was a philosophy student at Cambridge. When war was declared he was in Vienna – the city of his birth. He immediately enlisted as a foot soldier in the Austrian army. While serving on various fronts he worked on the first of his two books the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus.

I have The Private Notebooks on order from the library. After that, we’ll see if I get to do more than dip into the Tractatus. After all, it managed to baffle the best minds at Cambridge when the first English translation was published in 1922. 

Two things got me started on this reading adventure. The first was chancing upon this extraordinary poem that shares a title with Perloff. I read it and thought – I have to know more.

 Wittgenstein’s Ladder

“My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way:
anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as
nonsensical, when he has used them — as steps — to climb
up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder
after he has climbed up it.)” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus

1.

The first time I met Wittgenstein, I was
late. “The traffic was murder,” I explained.
He spent the next forty-five minutes
analyzing this sentence. Then he was silent.
I wondered why he had chosen a water tower
for our meeting. I also wondered how
I would leave, since the ladder I had used
to climb up here had fallen to the ground.

2.

Wittgenstein served as a machine-gunner
in the Austrian Army in World War I.
Before the war he studied logic in Cambridge
with Bertrand Russell. Having inherited
his father’s fortune (iron and steel), he
gave away his money, not to the poor, whom
it would corrupt, but to relations so rich
it would not thus affect them.

3.

On leave in Vienna in August 1918
he assembled his notebook entries
into the Tractatus, Since it provided
the definitive solution to all the problems
of philosophy, he decided to broaden
his interests. He became a schoolteacher,
then a gardener’s assistant at a monastery
near Vienna. He dabbled in architecture.

4.

He returned to Cambridge in 1929,
receiving his doctorate for the Tractatus,
“a work of genius,” in G. E. Moore’s opinion.
Starting in 1930 he gave a weekly lecture
and led a weekly discussion group. He spoke
without notes amid long periods of silence.
Afterwards, exhausted, he went to the movies
and sat in the front row. He liked Carmen Miranda.

5.

He would visit Russell’s rooms at midnight
and pace back and forth “like a caged tiger.
On arrival, he would announce that when
he left he would commit suicide. So, in spite
of getting sleepy, I did not like to turn him out.” On
such a night, after hours of dead silence, Russell said,
“Wittgenstein, are you thinking about logic or about
yours sins?” “Both,” he said, and resumed his silence.

6.

Philosophy was an activity, not a doctrine.
“Solipsism, when its implications are followed out
strictly, coincides with pure realism,” he wrote.
Dozens of dons wondered what he meant. Asked
how he knew that “this color is red,” he smiled
and said, “because I have learnt English.” There
were no other questions. Wittgenstein let the
silence gather. Then he said, “this itself is the answer.”

7.

Religion went beyond the boundaries of language,
yet the impulse to run against “the walls of our cage,”
though “perfectly, absolutely useless,” was not to be
dismissed. A. J. Ayer, one of Oxford’s ablest minds,
was puzzled. If logic cannot prove a nonsensical
conclusion, why didn’t Wittgenstein abandon it,
“along with the rest of metaphysics, as not worth
serious attention, except perhaps for sociologists”?

8.

Because God does not reveal himself in this world, and
“the value of this work,” Wittgenstein wrote, “is that
it shows how little is achieved when these problems
are solved.” When I quoted Gertrude Stein’s line
about Oakland, “there’s no there there,” he nodded.
Was there a there, I persisted. His answer: Yes and No.
It was as impossible to feel another’s person’s pain
as to suffer another person’s toothache.

9.

At Cambridge the dons quoted him reverently.
I asked them what they thought was his biggest
contribution to philosophy. “Whereof one cannot
speak, thereof one must be silent,” one said.
Others spoke of his conception of important
nonsense. But I liked best the answer John
Wisdom gave: “His asking of the question
`Can one play chess without the queen?'”

10.

Wittgenstein preferred American detective
stories to British philosophy. He liked lunch
and didn’t care what it was, “so long as it was
always the same,” noted Professor Malcolm
of Cornell, a former student, in whose house
in Ithaca Wittgenstein spent hours doing
handyman chores. He was happy then.
There was no need to say a word.

by John Lehman

“Philosophy was an activity, not a doctrine”

Philosophy is not something you study or a set of theories, it is something you do.

What a fascinating introduction! In a series of simple biographical vignettes linked with a piece of Wittgensteinian logic we have the man and his work! I think I have lots to look forward to. So I am off to climb the ladder. 

Nonsensical Logic

The second spur to this adventure was seeing this absurdity pop up in my online feed.

Also: Why doesn’t it snow in the summer when we could use the relief from the heat instead of in the winter when we are already cold? 

Lehman’s poem reveals Wittgenstein’s life and work as something quite simple while also being completely paradoxical, mysterious, and baffling. I shall approach this project in the spirit of play- as if it is all a game. After all, if his work puzzled the best minds of his generation what hope is there for me? Perhaps there is no there there to fret over and there’s nothing to worry about.  And when I hit a roadblock, I can always distract myself with another image.