It is understandable that these sorts of issues would gain his attention under such trying circumstances, but it is not at all clear how they connected with the topics investigated while in Cambridge and Norway. “Have thought a great deal on every possible subject,” he noted in his diary. “But curiously I cannot establish the connection with my mathematical modes of thought.” But the very next day, July 7, 1916, he assured himself: “However the connection will be produced!” (GT, pp. 72-73). Wittgenstein was convinced, or determined, that all of his problems must somehow go together.
The Tractatus does go on to incorporate this broader range of topics. The bridge connecting the “foundations of logic” and the “nature of the world” seems to be built on the notion of showing. In a letter to Russell (August 19, 1919), Wittgenstein emphasized that “The main point [of the book] is the theory of what can be expressed by propositions—i.e., by language—…and what cannot be expressed by propositions, but only shown; which, I believe, is the cardinal problem of philosophy.” This is a clear step beyond his plan in 1915 when his “whole task” was to explain the nature of the proposition, and consequently “the nature of all being.” His project was expanded by his experiences in the war.
Ethics
The sentence “Friendship is good” looks similar to the sentence “Friendship is rare.” Both are subject-predicate sentences that seem to describe something by ascribing a property to it. But in this case, Wittgenstein believed that we are deceived by language. The value of something is not just another fact about it, like its frequency. “In the world everything is as it is…: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental” (TLP 6.41). By “accidental,” Wittgenstein meant not that it was a mistake, but that it just happened to be that way and could have been otherwise. It is “accidental” how common or uncommon friendship is. Asserting that it is rare is a way of describing the world, or what is in the world. But whether friendship is good is not accidental. The value of something is not just another fact about it, which might have been otherwise.
So Wittgenstein maintained that “[value] lies outside the world” (TLP 6.41). Since to him propositions described the world, “All propositions are of equal value” (TLP 6.4). Namely, of no value. “Propositions can express nothing that is higher.” So, “it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics” (TLP 6.42).
Since Wittgenstein said little more about ethics in the Tractatus, some people concluded that he did not care about ethics, or considered it a mere matter of personal preference. This is how he was understood by the scientifically-minded Logical Positivists. However, placing value outside the world was not an attempt to devalue it, but rather to protect its value. “Ethics is transcendental” (TLP 6.421). Value is not said, or stated, but it is shown in what is said. “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical” (TLP 6.522).
In the course of discussing the ideas included in the Tractatus in 1917, his friend Engelmann sent Wittgenstein a poem that he especially liked. Wittgenstein replied: “The poem…is really magnificent. And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be—unutterably—contained in what has been uttered!” (PE, p. 7). And later, in 1919, when Wittgenstein was trying to get his work published, he wrote to a prospective publisher: “My work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one. For the Ethical is delimited from within, as it were, by my book; and I’m convinced that, strictly speaking, it can ONLY be delimited in this way. In brief, I think: All of that which many are babbling today, I have defined in my book by remaining silent about it” (WL, p. 288). So Wittgenstein wanted to protect ethics from babbling, not devalue it by the silent treatment. Ethics should be shown in other ways, but not talked about. Perhaps we can say that Wittgenstein was put off by people who gave mere “lip service” to ethics.
What Wittgenstein said about ethics applied in similar ways to art and religion. Those realms that have value will not be part of the contingent world; they will lie outside the world. “They are what is mystical” (TLP 6.522). Sentences with sense cannot be about them. This leads Wittgenstein to conclude the Tractatus with the infamous remark: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (TLP 7).
Thus, the account of language in the first part of the Tractatus spells out what can be said, and at the end, what cannot be said but only shown.
The Ladder
But just before that closing proposition 7, Wittgenstein offered this comment on his book: “My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical [in German: unsinnig], when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright” (TLP 6.54).
This is a rather shocking comment—that everything we have been struggling to understand is really just nonsense after all! But you can see his train of thought: He has been telling us that the only sentences with sense are those that say something about the world. Sentences cannot say something about the relationship between language and the world. Yet, that is exactly what the Tractatus is about. So it seems that the sentences of the Tractatus qualify as nonsense. They look like they are about something, but they are not.
What should we make of this? Some readers have taken Wittgenstein at his word and decided that the Tractatus really is just nonsense, and the lesson to be learned is that we should not engage in this kind of investigation of language and the world. According to this way of thinking, the Tractatus is an inside joke of sorts and those who “get it” think that Wittgenstein has been winking at them all along.
But this reaction does not seem to be what Wittgenstein himself intended. When suggestions were being offered for an English title for the book, Wittgenstein wrote to the publisher: “As for the title I think the Latin one is better… ‘Philosophic Logic’ is wrong. In fact I don’t know what it means! There is no such thing as philosophic logic. (Unless one says that as the whole book is nonsense the title might as well be nonsense too)” (LO, p. 20). Since he did not want a nonsense title, this suggests he did not consider the book itself to be complete nonsense either.
In addition, Wittgenstein spent a good deal of effort trying to explain the positions he took in the Tractatus to Russell, as well as to his friends Paul Engelmann and Frank Ramsey. Russell reported to a friend on the first of several meetings he had with Wittgenstein in The Hague shortly after the war: “He is so full of logic that I can hardly get him to talk about anything personal…. He came before I was up, and hammered on my door until I woke. Since then he has talked logic for 4 hours.” Ramsey reported, when he met with Wittgenstein a few years later, that “W[ittgenstein] explains his book to me from 2-7 every day” (LO, p. 79).
So this raises the question whether there is a difference between bad nonsense (not even worth bothering with) and good nonsense (which can have some value). The image of the ladder, as well as the time Wittgenstein spent trying to explain his views to people, suggests he thought that what he offered was good nonsense, at least in its effects. But what to make of this remains a point of contention among readers of the Tractatus.
Interlude
Wittgenstein finished the manuscript for the Tractatus before the war was over. As soon as he could write to Russell, on March 13, 1919, he announced: “I’ve written a book called ‘Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung’ containing all my work of the last six years. I believe I’ve solved our problems finally. This may sound arrogant but I can’t help believing it.” In the published “Preface” to the Tractatus, he concludes: “Th
e truth of the thoughts that are here communicated seems to me to be unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems.” Yet, when he corresponded with one potential publisher for the work, he “told him quite frankly that he would not make any money with the book since no one will read it, even less understand it,” and he informed another potential publisher: “you won’t—I really believe—get too much out of reading it. Because you won’t understand it; the content will seem quite strange to you” (LF, pp. 93-94). Given this defeatist attitude, it’s not surprising it took two years to find a publisher!
Wittgenstein sent a copy of the manuscript to Engelmann who, in his return letter, made fun of Wittgenstein’s numbering system (DG, p. 162):
Dear Mr Wittgenstein, I am very pleased to hear,
through your family, that you are well. I
hope that you do not take it badly that I have
not written to you for so long, but I had so
much to write that I preferred to leave it to
a reunion that I hope will be soon. But I must
now thank you with all my heart for your
manuscript, a copy of which I received some time
ago from your sister. I think I now, on the
whole, understand it, at least with me you have
entirely fulfilled your purpose of providing
somebody some enjoyment through the book; I am
certain of the truth of your thoughts and
discern their meaning. Best wishes,
Yours sincerely, Paul Engelmann.
Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine, however, was not so confident: “I have read through your essay twice…. I had to laugh at myself because I knew from the beginning that I could not understand it and yet I could not stop” (October 19, 1920).
The manuscript was finally published as a long article in German, and then a year later as a book in both German and English, finally titled the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But, as indicated by the Preface, Wittgenstein, in essence, was now finished with philosophy—he had found the “final solution” to his problems.
The religious feelings that had helped Wittgenstein during battle remained with him for a time after the war. When he met with Russell to discuss the Tractatus in The Hague, Russell reported to a friend: “I found that he has become a complete mystic. He reads people like Kierkegaard and Angelus Silesius, and he seriously contemplates becoming a monk.” We do not hear what he had been reading by Silesius, but in the Cherubinic Wanderer, a 17th Century collection of his aphorisms we find:
Silence, Beloved, silence: if you can be completely silent, then God will show you more good than you know how to desire.
If you wish to express the being of eternity, you must first abandon all discourse.
And, as Russell noted in the letter, Wittgenstein inquired about entering a monastery.
Yet, a wartime friend recalled that one night less than a year later, Wittgenstein “had the feeling that he had been called, but had refused.” Ten years after that he had lost the mystical feeling, but retained the contrast between talking religion and living it. He told his friend Con Drury: “If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn’t be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.” Then he added: “There is a sense in which you and I are both Christians.” Still later, in 1949, Wittgenstein summed up his mixed feelings about religion: “I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.”
Recall that Wittgenstein’s father had passed away before the war, and Wittgenstein stood to inherit a fortune. But he had insisted that he would not keep any of this money, allocating his share to his siblings and making donations to various artists. Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine reported: “A hundred times he wanted to assure himself that there was no possibility of any money still belonging to him in any shape or form. To the despair of the notary carrying out the transfer, he returned to this point again and again.” The notary finally exploded: “So, you want to commit financial suicide!”
Wittgenstein knew he needed to earn a living and he decided to train as an elementary school teacher, a profession in which, as he told a fellow soldier after the war, he felt he would “come into human contact with the world around” him (BW, p. 51). So he set off on a path away from philosophy.
Over the next several years, Wittgenstein taught elementary school in rural Austria, briefly worked as a gardener in a monastery, and helped, along with Engelmann, design and build a house for his sister.
There is no doubt that teaching children brought Wittgenstein into human contact with the world around him. It certainly gave him a perspective very different from the one he had writing the Tractatus, where he had simply proclaimed his views. Russell had once complained to Wittgenstein that “he ought not to simply state what he thinks true, but to give arguments for it.” Wittgenstein had replied that “arguments spoil its beauty” and that he would feel as if “dirtying a flower with muddy hands” (WL, p. 104). Now he had to get his hands dirty—not only in explaining what he said, but also in finding ways to interest his students and overcome their confusion. Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine recalled watching him teach: “He did not simply lecture, but tried to lead the boys to the correct solution by means of questions” (MB, p. 5). It was Wittgenstein’s impatience with the students who were not so easily engaged that ultimately led him to abandon this career in 1926. That was when he was charged with hitting a student, and then lying about it. Wittgenstein left teaching rather than face the charges.
For the next two years, he lived in Vienna and focused, along with Engelmann, on the design and construction of a house for his sister Gretl. Engelmann was actually an architect and a student of Adolf Loos, who received a $10,000 donation from Wittgenstein after his father died. But Engelmann had so much respect for Wittgenstein that he gave him control of the details. The house is designed in a spare modernist style, both inside and out.
Wohnhaus, Haus Stonborough-Wittgenstein
Much has been written about this building, especially of the interior details: “It is free from all decoration and marked by severe exactitude in measure and proportion,” wrote one scholar. “Its beauty is of the same simple and static kind that belongs to the sentences of the Tractatus” (MM, p. 10-11). Wittgenstein’s other sister Hermine wrote: “Even though I admired the house very much, I always knew that I neither wanted to, nor could, live in it myself. It seemed indeed to be much more a dwelling for the gods than for a small mortal like me.” The house still stands in Vienna, owned by the Bulgarian Embassy and occupied by its Cultural Department.
That Wittgenstein considered this work to be the start of a new career is indicated by his new stationery, headed as: “Paul Engelmann and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Architects, Wien III, Parkgasse 18,” and the fact that he had himself listed in the Vienna City directory as a professional architect (DG, p. 236).
Return to Philosophy
By bringing him to Vienna, Wittgenstein’s work as an architect also brought him back into contact with intellectual friends. Actually, his time as an elementary school teacher in rural Austria had not separated him from philosophy completely. A young Cambridge mathematics and philosophy student, Frank Ramsey (1903-1930), had done the English translation of the Tractatus, and he sought out Wittgenstein in his rural school postings to discuss the book with him more than once.
In Vienna, by 1926, there were more philosophers who had gotten interested in the Tractatus and wanted to meet with Wittgenstein. They were connected with the scientifically-minded Vienna Circle, the source of the philosophical viewpoint known as Logical Positivism. Wittgenstein agreed to meet with a few of them. He soon suspected, however, that they had misunderstood the latter parts of the Tractatus, and he would sometimes participate in meetings only b
y turning his back on the audience and reciting poetry, often from the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore (VC, p. 15). This was a perfect illustration of the moral of the Tractatus—to show what cannot be said.
In March of 1928, the Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer came to Vienna to give a pair of lectures. The Vienna Circle members planned to attend and invited Wittgenstein to accompany them. He went to the first lecture and afterward joined them for a few hours at a café. One of them recalled: “…it was fascinating to behold the change that overcame Wittgenstein that evening…he became extremely voluble and began sketching the ideas that were the beginnings of his later writings…that evening marked the return of Wittgenstein to strong philosophical interests and activities” (DG, p. 249).
While several years earlier Wittgenstein felt he had “found, on all essential points, the final solution of [his philosophical] problems,” discussions with Ramsey, and now with the Vienna Circle members, left him less certain. And, more importantly, they left him with a desire to think about philosophy again.
Return to Cambridge
Wittgenstein was ready for something else. As his sister Hermine put it: “The completion of the house probably…marked the end of another stage in Ludwig’s development, and he turned again to philosophy” (MB, p. 10). Friends of his at Cambridge were anxious to bring him back and arranged for him to have a fellowship that would support him there (remember, he had given away his fortune) and allow him to focus on philosophy again.
Simply Wittgenstein Page 5
