Wittgenstein Jr

<Taking a break here to work on other things. Will return in August or so.>

Death. He is drunk with death.

They say the world was created from nothing, he says. Creation ex nihlio, he says.

But that’s not how the world was created. There was something before there was nothingness. A kind of present absence. Non-non-being. Existence, but without anything in particular existing.

He speaks of a kind of bruise, but without there being any flesh to bruise. He speaks of a kind of ache, but without there being a body to ache. He speaks of a kind of sobbing, but without there being any eyes to weep. He speaks of a kind of dying, without there being any kind of life. He speaks of a kind of ending, long before there was anything to end.

Yes, he is going mad. Of course he is! We are all going mad, some of us more quickly, some of us more slowly.

What saves us is that madness is no longer mad, he says. Our madness can only ever be sham madness. Our madness: not even madness.

He is going mad, he says, drawing the quote marks in the air. We are all going mad, he says, drawing them again.

Our sense of entitlement. Our sense that everything must come to us, and in our terms. Our sense that our ignorance should set the standards of teaching. Our sense that we should be reached where we are, and at the level of our ignorance. Our sense that our teachers should bow down to us.

Everything has always come to us on our terms, he can see that. Everything has always reached us at our level. And even philosophy must come to us in our terms, he knows that. Even the very philosophers themselves must duck their heads to enter our Wendy house.

Immanuel Kant must duck his head! Gottfried Leibniz must duck his head! John Stuart Mill must duck his head!

Thinking is no longer an honest pursuit for us, he says. A decent pursuit. There is something covert about our thinking. Something dirty. Thinking has become a private affair. A secret affair.

And thinking is lonely, he says. There’s no one to accompany us as thinkers, he says. There are no fellows, no friends. And there’s no audience, either. There’s no one for whom to write. No one who cares.

Once, thought was also a matter of character, he says. Thought was a matter of living in a certain way. Once, you were judged as a thinker on the way you lived before others. You showed what you thought by the way you lived. By the evidence of your life. And now?

The thinker is a kind of beetle, he says. The thinker is a nocturnal insect. The thinker goes about in darkness. The thinker lives and dies unnoticed. His body is swept away with all the others, like a fly that has died in a dusty corner.

It is as though no one had ever thought, he says. It’s as though everyone had forgotten how to think, and forgotten all the techniques of thinking.

We no longer know how to think, he says. How to tell real from fake thinking. The skill of thinking has gone, he says. The craft of thinking. The honesty of thought, when you could judged what was thought, and what you thought.

The day of thinking has passed, he says. The day of thinkers, working as simply and honestly as labourers in the sun. The day of thinker-fellows, corresponding with one another, addressing learned audiences. The day the thinker was part of a culture, part of something held in common. The day thinkers pressed towards a common goal.

He used to walk several paces behind his brother.

What effect does the sun warming his head have on his brother’s thinking?, he wonders. What effect does the rain pelting his head have on his brother’s thinking? What effect does thick fog have, so thick you can barely seen ten feet in front on your eyes, have on his brother’s thinking? What effect does the crunch of snow underfoot have on his brother’s thinking? What effect does keeping the river on his left have on his brother’s thinking? And on his right?

What was the influence of topography on his brother’s thinking?, he wonders. Of elevation? Of depression? Is the thought of the valley bottom any different from the thought on the hill-crest?

Was his brother’s thought affected by the density of cloud?, he wonders. By different kinds of precipitation? Did he have snow thoughts and hail thoughts? Was the clarity of the sky proportionate to the clarity in his head? Did a windy day mean the thoughts in his head were likewise windy?

Was his brother’s thought affected by the time of day?, he wonders. Were his brother’s  morning thoughts different from his lunchtime thoughts? Was there something particular to his brother’s afternoon thoughts, and to his evening thoughts?

He sees things from the perspective of the future. From an unimaginable future. From billions of years hence. Trillions of years. The things of the universe will only fly apart forever, he says. One day, you won’t be able to see the stars. The planets will be detached from their orbits. The stars will slowly exhaust their fuel and die. Black holes will throb in the darkness. And one day, they, too, will disappear. All the nucleons will have decayed. All the protons. And the university will be dark, dark, dark.

The end is endless, he says. The end goes on forever.

His sense of futility. His sense of hopelessness. His sense of the end, that’s already ended, that everything has already happened, that all that is happening has already happened. That nothing is new, or can be new. That it’s all happened before, not once, but a thousand times.

His sense of the hollowness of things. Of the hollowness of the present. That it’s all been hollowed out, cored out. That there’s no centre anymore. That things will soon break apart. Fly apart.

We are not the only thinking-companions he has.

Ede and I saw him on the road to Grantchester, with a short, Mediterranean-looking man, an economist, apparently, from one of the newer colleges. We follow them at a distance. What are they talking about? The economist’s gesticulations. The economist’s flamboyance. Wittgenstein Jr looking thoughtful. Wittgenstein Jr, quiet, and nodding his head.

How much the economist talks! How interested Wittgenstein Jr seems! Ah, if only he were as interested in us! If only he listened to us, as he listens to his economist friend!

And then, on another occasion, Scroggins saw Wittgenstein Jr and the economist walking along the College Backs. The two men stood at the edge of a flowerbed, passing a stick between them, drawing something in the wet mud. Wittgenstein Jr drew something; the economist added something to the drawing – and, then, with an impatient gesture, appeared to draw a line through it. Wittgenstein Jr nodded. Yes, he seemed to say. A pause, Wittgenstein Jr clearly deep in thought. Then, the philosopher takes the stick and draws another diagram. This time, it is the economist’s turn to nod. Then the two men resumed their pacing.

Mathenge and Alice Seddon saw him with a white-robed Dominican, the pair walking along the river, slowly and quietly. They seemed barely to speak to one another, being silent for long stretches. They seemed to be meditating with one another, to be attuned to one another. Wittgenstein Jr seemed truly relaxed with his Dominican friend. His brow was unfurrowed. His face was unstrained. He seemed truly at peace.

Ah, if only we were as spiritually advanced as Wittgenstein Jr’s Dominican friend. If only we could offer our teaching spiritual comfort!

Of course, philosophy is unique among subjects because it does not know what it is, he says. Because no one knows what it is; one philosopher says philosophy is one thing, and another philosopher says that it’s another thing, and no one can convince anyone else of what philosophy is, and no one can be convinced of what philosophy is.

In the end, philosophy is a question-mark rather than an academic subject, he says. In the end, philosophy is only a kind of search for itself, for philosophy, he says. This is why every great philosopher has his or her own version of what philosophy is, he says. Every great philosopher, in doing great philosophy, totally reinvents what philosophy is, he says.

With the great philosopher, the entire philosophical lexicon gains new meaning, he says. With the great philosopher, every item in the philosopher’s vocabulary is subtly altered, he says. With the great philosophy, the very heart of philosophy is remade, he says.

In the end, every debate between great philosophers is a debate about the nature and meaning of philosophy, he says. This is why no such debate can ever be settled, he says. It is why you can’t meaningfully arbitrate in a debate between entirely different visions of philosophy.

Of course, he doesn’t intend remaking philosophy, he says. He doesn’t have any intention of remaking philosophy. He means to bring the endless remaking of philosophy to an end. He means to bring philosophy itself to an end, he says.

His teaching.

Half his class have left, and each week fewer and fewer people attend.

How many people will be left? Who will survive the winnowing out?

His class is shrinking: good, he says. It’s all to the good.

No one comes to his classes: good.

What he teaches is not for everyone.

He will return. And he will bring the finished Logik.

He will return – we will know him in a greater Spring, in the coming Spring. We will know him in the greater Day.

He has disappeared. His rooms are empty. The tomb is empty.

What has happened to his Logik? Where are the pages he was working on?

He has cleared out his rooms. Not a trace of him remains. His papers are gone. His laptop. Was he even here? Did we dream him up?

We are changing. We are becoming more serious. We are becoming less and less tolerant of anything but seriousness.

We are losing all our friends but our classmates, our remaining classmates.

In our phone-calls to our parents we sound more distant.

We no longer update our Facebook pages.

We know thought’s cost. We know what thought has asked from him. What it has demanded.

He bears thought’s scars. He bears the stigmata of thought. The nails have been driven through his hands. The transept has been raised. His body hangs from the cross. Thought’s crown of thorns makes his forehead bleed.

How many days are left? How many days can there be left?

We are running out of time. The moment is ripe. The moment must come. But when will it come?

Will we still be human, at the very end? Will we still be alive?

What will it mean, this, ‘to be alive’?

He works. We wait.

He has brought life to us. He has brought us to life.

He stands between us. His spirit stands between us. We relate to one another by way of him.

We wait, we speak, in hushed tones.

Soon, the world will be changed. Soon, the world will not be as it was.

The ground is shaking. The stars are trembling.

These are the last days of winter. Soon will come the first days of Spring.

He is calling up gods. He is summoning spirits.

His rooms are a sacred space, a grove. His rooms are the temple. His work is a rite, is a liturgy, is a kind of prayer.

His role: to welcome the moment, to let it come. Not to frighten it off. Not to scare it. To let it come, to let it enter the grove.

He works, we wait.

The moment is coming.

He must not miss the moment of its coming. Closer, closer – but the moment must approach him, not he, it. The moment must come of its own accord. The moment must be free to come – or not come.

Is there enough time? Does he have enough time? Spring is coming – but will it be his Spring? The buds are about to blossom – but will his thought blossom?

He works. We wait.

He is alone in his rooms, but he contains multitudes. The whole of thought stirs in him. The Babel of thinking murmurs in him. He is a crowd, a riot, a horde.

How can he bear to be alone? How can he bear to hear these voices?

He is alone. He must be alone in the final phases. He must preserve himself in solitude. He must not speak, lest he disturb his thought, lest he compromise it by over-simplification, lest he render it with lack of appropriate nuance, of appropriate subtlety.

He is alone. He is the minute hand that moves towards midnight. Soon, the moment will strike.

He works, we wait.

His rooms, with their drawn curtains, are his chrysalis.

He is changing. Working in his rooms, he is changing.

We look up at his rooms as we pass. His light is on. No doubt he is walking back and forth, trying to stir himself to thought. No doubt he stares out of his window, seeing nothing.

Perhaps he prays. Perhaps he kneels by his bed and prays. Perhaps he mutters continuously in prayer.

Wittgenstein Jr is working. He is almost at the end. He is writing the last page. He is turning the last page, and closing the book.

We shudder as we think of what he is undergoing. We tremble as we think of the changes that he is enduring. Who will he be? What will he become tomorrow?

We, Wittgenstein Jr’s class, spend more time with one another.

The feeling that we’re in on something. Complicit with something. The feeling that we will have to see something through to the end.

The feeling that only we can understand each other. That no one else understands.

The feeling that we’re waiting for something. That our lives are in suspense in that waiting.

The feeling of excitement. Of trepidation. We call one another, but say nothing. We go our walking, saying nothing. We get buses from the city to walk in the Fens. We visit the cathedral at Ely. We wait. We walk. Our waiting, our quiet companionship, is a waiting.

The last step – the hardest step. The most dangerous step. The step that takes the greatest courage. The step that, when it finishes, will change everything. The step that changes the one who steps.

No, he will not be the same person. The end will not be like the beginning. The last day will not be like the first. Tomorrow will not be like yesterday.

He is carrying us with him. We will pass over the edge of thought’s waterfall with him. We will tumble into the thought’s plunge pool with him.

Thought is howling: can we hear it? Logic is howling. The wind is tearing the world to shreds. Now it begins: the great desolation. Now it will come: the storm of the cosmos.

The sky is cracking: can we hear it? The sky is about to shatter. The stars are stigmata drilling into the night. The earth is groaning. It sings, it groans. The very ground trembles.

Thought is exploding inside him. Logic is exploding inside him.

He is heavy with thought. Heavy with child. When will it come to term?

Thought! Thought! More alive than he is, more alive than he can be.

To owe everything to what came before you. To that on which your being depends.

How is that he’s never lived, until now? How is it that he’s never known what it means to live?

To be a midwife to thought, to his own thought. But it is not his own thought. It is anything but his own.

Will he betray his thought? Will he see it through? How will he keep loyal to what is gathering inside him?

Now, only now, does he understand what it means not to want to die before his time.

Now, only now, does he know what it means to want to live, not for his own sake, but for what thinks inside him.

Wittgenstein Jr’s class.

We are losing our softness; the bones are showing beneath our flesh.

We are becoming tougher, hardened to battle, soldiers in a thought-war. We are becoming a unit, a troop, part of a thought-corps, a thought-cadre.

Wittgenstein Jr’s class.

Our thought is becoming harder, keener; our edges are being sharpened. We are becoming hard, crystalline. We are coming to resemble bladed weapons, spiny anteaters, undersea urchins made of spikes.

Wittgenstein Jr’s class.

We are reaching greater heights; greater depths. We walk among the stars. True, sometimes it seems we climb too high, that we cannot breathe, that there is no chance to draw breath, that the air is thin, rarefied, but we are closer to the sky here, closer to the stars, closer to the night. And it seems we go down too low, that we come close to where crust turns to mantle, and turns to fire. That we find ourselves close, too close, to the flaming roots of things.

Wittgenstein Jr’s class.

The sense of growing pressure, of growing urgency. The sense of the absolute importance of his ideas. The sense that it will all, very soon, make perfect sense.

A pell-mell of logical symbols, of logical operators. The blackboard on the mantle-shelf written upon and wiped clean. Fewer pauses to think; fewer moments of silence, and those that occur more tense than before.

He speaks more quickly, more intimately, presuming our understanding, our complicity, depending on the fact that we have been following him for some time. He speaks more quietly, his voice becoming sometimes no more than a murmuring, than a rumbling on the edges of sense, his voice becoming noise, becoming hubbub, even as he speaks with more urgency, with more passion, with more of a sense that things are coming to a head.

Wittgenstein Jr’s class. His seriousness. His gravity.

A kind of transference is occurring. We, too, are becoming serious. We, too, feel something of his urgency. We clench and unclench our hands, like him. We furrow our brows, like him. We purse our lips, like him.

We feel his sense of urgency. We feel that something is happening. That something is occurring. We feel that a threshold has been reached. That resolution is close. The end of all labours.

Things will bear fruit! Things will make sense! A Sabbath will follow the days of work. A great Sunday of life. But until then ... more work! More seriousness!

Wittgenstein Jr’s class.

We do not expect to understand; we do not need to understand. The lectures pass over us, by us, but this barely bothers us.

He thinks for us, in our place. He shows us what it means to think, what it means to take thought seriously. He thinks for us, who have no idea what thinking us, what thinking means.

He thinks for us, for whom the spectacle of thought is sufficient; the spectacle of effort.

Wittgenstein Jr’s class.

Does he think we are concentrating? Does he think we are able to listen?  Does he think we are taking notes? Does he think we are thinking about what he says, and not about the fact of his thinking about them, the fact of his presence before us, the fact that we are here, and that he is here, that we must be here, and that he must be here, that it is Monday afternoon, that this is where we have to be on a Monday afternoon.

Does he think that what he teaches has any relevance to us? Does he think what he says can enter our souls? Does he think that he will shape us by what he says? Does he think we will be formed in some way? Does he think we are capable of learning a lesson? Of taking something in? Does he think that we have any interest in logic? That logic means anything to us? Does he think we have chosen his module for any reason other than that he promised us first class marks?

True, we must admit that there is something interesting about him; that he is a figure of curiosity for us; that his quirks are unusual; that he is a ‘case’. We must admit that we want to see where it is all going, that there is a sense of gathering urgency to his lectures, that the momentum is increasing, that something is coming to climax, that, soon enough, it will reach its head

We must admit that even we are in the grip of his teaching, that we are waiting to find out what happens, that we know the dam will burst, and we are curious to see its bursting, that we are waiting for the release after long weeks of tension.

After philosophy, life itself will think in us. Thought itself will think inside us.

After philosophy, thought will be a matter of habit, of second nature. Thought will be entirely thoughtless.

After philosophy, we will think with our hands, with our feet.

After philosophy, we will think by running, by weeping, by living, by leaping.

After philosophy, we won’t want to think – but we won’t not want to think.

After philosophy, thinking and not thinking will become indiscernible. Indistinguishable.

After philosophy, thought will be concrete, absolutely concrete. Thought will bear only on what is absolutely real.

After philosophy, the centre will be everywhere. Cambridge will be everywhere.

After philosophy, Cambridge will hatch. The walls of the colleges will crack like egg shells.

After philosophy, there will be no more lessons, he says. We will learn not to learn.

After philosophy, we will heed what the birds say. We will learn the language of the Cam, and its bridges.

After philosophy, thought will be banal. Thought will be utterly ordinary, utterly everyday.

After philosophy, the simplest will have the profoundest thoughts. The profound will have the simplest thoughts.

After philosophy, the atheist will think only of God. The religious person will think only of the divine absence.

After philosophy, thought will be simple. No one will have to try to think.

After philosophy, thoughts will be common, had by all.

After philosophy, we’ll no longer think alone.

After philosophy, we’ll think in pairs, in groups.

After philosophy, we’ll share thoughts. We’ll bear thought in common. Thought will be of all, for all.

After philosophy, thought will be a common possession. Philosophy will be on the tip of everyone’s tongue.