Wittgenstein Jr

A wrong turn. That's where you have to begin. You have to have got lost. You have to be wandering in circles, dazed, fatigued.

The thinker is a horizontal person, don't we see? A defeated person.

The true thinker thinks about the end, Wittgenstein Jr. Only about that. About where the end has left him. 

We can't escape, he says. Do we realise that?

Ah, but we don't see it. We don't understand anything. That's our great good fortune: that we understand nothing of what he tells us.

His life. What can we understand of his life? He wants to explain it to us, but how can he explain it? He wants to tell us about suffering, but you can't be told about suffering.

How can he begin? How can he start to explain? The mystics speak of a darkness that shines, he says. He would speak of a death that lives. His life: death alive. A living death.

You have to fall in order to think, he says. To fall from thought. From the belief that you can think. From believing that it is in your power to think.

To say, I have no thoughts: that is the beginning of understanding, he says. To say, I cannot think. Then something begins.

What he is after is a kind of holy stupidity, he says. A bright stupidity, on which light shines from above.

The thinker must have his head in the noose, if he is to think, Wittgenstein Jr says. The thinker must have his head in the gas oven, if he is to achieve anything at all. 

The desire for self-annihilation is the first sign of thought, he says. The desire to commit suicide is the beginning of thinking. 

You can think only when you experience the impossibility of thinking, he says. Thought begins when you know that it is utterly impossible for you to think.

It is finished: that is the first thing the thinker says. I am at the end: that's when real thought begins. 

We must think like animals that are half run over, he says. We must think as an animal flays which has its spine half crushed. The condition of thought: to live with your skull cracked and broken, and bits of bone beaten into your brain. The condition of truth: to be alive, still alive, with your throat cut open. 

We must think with our misery, he says. From it. We must paint with just one colour. Black painted on black. Spirals of blackness cut into blackness. 

The thinker: death given life. Death given just enough life to think about death. 

His life as a thinker. He has never even raised his head, he says. He's never lived in three dimensions. 

He's only ever lived on one plane, he says. Pressed flat, and moving from side to side like a snake. No: he's only ever lived in one point, he says. In a single dimension. 

His life: a point falling inwards, lost in itself. A little singularity, a little black hole. We musn't get too close, he says.

Keep away from me!, he wants to say. But he wants us close. He needs us to be close.

No one understands the tone of his work, Wittgenstein Jr says. No one listens to him.

What matters is the spirit of his work: why does no one understand that?

We are too young to hear him. Too innocent. But he loves our youth, he says. He loves our innocence.

We musn't grow old like him, he says. We must forget what he says. Forget him! We must forget he was ever amongst us. 

He has wounded our innocence, he says. That wound must close up. 

Philosophy wants to die, he says. Only he can see - really see - that. That's his great gift, he says: knowing that philosophy wants to die.

The time of philosophy - of great philosophy - has passed, he says. Philosophy knows that, he says. Philosophy is certain of that. 

How can he let philosophy live on? How can he let it stagger on? The kind thing is to let philosophy die, he says. That's why he's come to Cambridge, he says. That's why he's here: to euthanise philosophy.

He has come to Cambridge to suffer for philosophy. To suffer for philosophy, and perhaps die for philosophy, or at the very least go mad for philosophy.

The end of great philosophical thought, and the whole tradition of great philosophical thought: that is what he has come to Cambridge to perform.

This is the last time certain gestures of thought will be made, and certain philosophical steps taken, he says. This is the last time that it wil be possible to speak of the end of philosophy.

He has to come to utter the last rites of philosophy, he says. Of great philosophy. He has come to that place most antithetical to philosophy to lay a wreath for philosophy, he says.

To put philosophy out of its misery: isn't that what he wants? To place the pillow over the head of philosophy, of great philosophy, and let it suffocate.

His agoraphobia. He doesn't like to show it to us, his companions. But we can see that he doesn't like to rest in the open. He doesn't like to pause on the paths we follow through the fields.

Before the sky, you can have no secrets, he says.

The light goes right through him, he says. It leaves him no hiding place.

The sky is an eye that sees, he says. A blind eye, that sees.

The sky is burrowing into me, he says.

It is when he is out in the open that he feels his loneliness most terribly, he says.

Thought trusts him, in our imagination. Thought alights in his hand. Thought comes to him, like a shy animal. Thought asks him for his blessing.

It is not like that, he says.

We cannot understand his pain. The depths of his pain.

His pain is stellar, he says. Interstellar.

There are saints of thought, do we realise that?, he says. There are martyrs of thought, too.

For his part, he has tried to be a witness for thought, he says.

Death. He is drunk with death.

Our time is not real to him. It is not substantial.

He feels unreal himself, he says. Frayed, somehow.

He is not quite real. None of this - he gestures at the university buildings - none of this is real.

The world is emptying out, he says. The sky: emptying out.

The sky is hollow, he says. We are hollow.

Our thoughts are hollow, he says. His thoughts, especially, are hollow, he says. Our times are hollow times.

Once, he is sure, it was possible to think. Once, living was possible. But nothing is possible now.

The failure of his Logik is also the failure of an epoch, he says.

The incompletion of his Logik is also an epoch's incompleteness.

In a culture, the Logik would have been possible. But in a civilisation? In our civilisation?

He wonders whether the limits he has reached are the limits of an epoch; whether his failures are likewise the faliures of an epoch.

He is tempted to believe that his failure has a world-historical significance. That it rings out in eternity.

He has come to Cambridge to be close to the thieves, he says. Do we know who the thieves are? We shake our heads. He quotes from scripture: Blessed are those who know at what time of night the thieves will come. They will be awake, gathering their strength and strapping on their belts, before the thieves arrive. It is night, he says. He is gathering his strength. He is strapping on his belt. He has come to Cambridge to rout the thieves.

Logic is driving him mad, he says. But in return, in revenge, he will drive logic mad!

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.

Thought is not thought, he says. Do we know that? Philosophy is not philosophy. Do we understand?

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

To experience the impossibility of thought. Even that is beyond us, he says. To experience the impossibility of the impossibility of thought. That, too, is beyond us, he says.

The head is the problem, he says. The head!

We are too much head, that's the problem.

How will we cut off our heads? How to live without a head?

Wittgenstein Jr is vexed today. How can we possibly get along with each other?, he says. He feels disgust on his side, just as we must feel disgust on our side. His disgust, our disgust. How will we ever get beyond that?

Are we disgusted with him?, he asks us. Why not? Are we disgusted with ourselves. Then he pauses. No, you mustn't answer that.

Self-disgust is for him, and not us, he says. We are young, innocent. And he loves us for our youth, and for our innocence.

I will oveturn this house and none will be able to rebuild it, he says, quoting scripture. That's what he means to do to philosophy, he says. He means to overturn philosophy's house, so that none can rebuild it.

When will the Kingdom come?, he wonders to, as if to himself. Then he replies: The Kingdom is already here, if only we could see it. He will never make himself understood, he says. If only we could see what he already sees!

Whoever lives the interpretation of these words will no longer taste death. He is quoting from memory, but where from? Scripture, he says. He wants to say the same of his Logik, he says. Whoever lives the interpretation of its words will no longer taste death.

Whoever is near to me is near to the fire. Whoever is far from me is far from the Kingdom. He is quoting again. It is the same for his Logik, he says. His book really is near the fire. It really is near the Kingdom. And then, quietly, as to himself: I have sown fire upon the world and now I tend it to a blaze.

Any real thinker would go mad, he says. Any real thought is also a mad thought.

The real thinker is a sick thinker, he says. Real thoughts are sick thoughts.

When did thought go mad?, he wonders. When did it get sick?

That there never was any philosophy: that's what he is trying to show. That what appeared, from the first, to be philosophy, was not, in fact, philosophy.

His task: to show that philosophy, in its entirety, was poorly founded. That philosophy, from the first, got off to a poor start, and never corrected that start.

His task: to gently suffocate philosophy. To let it die without fuss. To let philosophy fall into death as into sleep. Go to sleep, philosophy, he will say, as he closes its eyes. Go to sleep.

And when his task is done? When philosophy has sunk to the ground, knees buckling, when it has breathed its last breath? Then it will be the turn of him, too, to sink to the ground, for his knees to buckle. Then it will be time for his last breath.

Go to sleep, he will say to philosophy, gently closing its eyes. Go to sleep, God will say to him, and gently close his eyes. 

He will be the last philosopher, if he accomplishes his work, he says. Philosophy will die with him, when he dies, if he is able to finish his work.

He will place the chloroformed rag over the face of philosophy. And then God will place the chloroformed rag over his face. 

His own death: that's where his work will end. His own extinction.

The death of philosophy. His death.

He has been cored out, as apples can be cored out. He has no centre. No ideas.

He is experiencing a kind of cancer of thought, he says. A thought-cancer.

Not thought, but the erosion of thought. Not thought, but the decomposition of thought.

Thought is also sick - do we understand that?

One must be sick, very sick, to be able to think. To have sick thoughts, which, for him, are the only thoughts.

Thought is ill, desperately ill, he says. Only the ill can think. And only the terminally ill can think thought through to the end.

To reach the end of thought, he says. To bring thought to an end. But at the end, there is also the thought of the end. At the end of thought, there is also the thought of the end of thought. 

He feels dead, unresponsive, he says. The world is dead and unresponsive, he says.

How can he be said to live?, he says. How can anyone be said to live?

There is no possibility of living, not anymore. The very conditions of possibility of life have been destroyed.

Life: what is that?, he says. None of us knows. None of us has the first idea.

Who can be said to live now? Who really lives?

We must only say what we have to say, he says. But what is it that we have to say?

We must not renounce the world, he says. We must let the world renounce us.

To save oneself: that is a reason to commit suicide. An absurd reason. 

The absurdity of reason done to save oneself.

Who are to presume that we might take our own lives?

Our lives are not ours to take.

Our lives: what an absurd expression!

We must try and learn what thought is, he says. What a thinker is.

Who will teach us to think?

He is not our leader, he says. He is in need of a leader. That's what he feels more acutely than any of us: the need for a leader. That is why he appears to be our leader.

To be led. To follow. What deeper wish has he than that?

He would follow us, if he could! He would be led by us!

Tiredness of thought. Tiredness of life. 

Wie taurig!, he cries. What unhappiness!

How many forces are arrayed against him!

The plantation. Pine trees, towering. No undergrowth here, only pine needles.

It's as though the sky had clouded over, Wittgenstein Jr says.

A pause.

He is a burden to everyone around him, he says. He knows that. He is a burden to the university!

We demur. Of course he is not burden! He's the very opposite of a burden!

I'm hollow, he says. I'm not real. Tap me, and you will hear a hollow sound.

We pass a small brick outhouse, then a barn, its doors open, giving into the greeny-black gloom.

You wouldn't suppose people could lack the desire to live, Wittgenstein Jr says. You would have thought that people simply - lived. But it's not as simple as that.

We listen. Wittgenstein Jr is in an expansive mood.

If suicide is allowed, then everything is allowed, he says. If anything is not allowed, then suicide is not allowed. He's quoting, he says.

The path along the field, its verges torn up by tractor tyres.

You have to want to live, if you are to live, Wittgenstein Jr says. That's what his brothers lacked, he says. The desire to live.

A pause, as we make way for a Land Rover.

Lebenskraft, he says. Lebenswille. His brothers lacked Lebenswille.

Sometimes, he, too lacks Lebenswille, Wittgenstein Jr says.

But we are full of Lebenswille, he says. That's why he keeps us close to him.

My father used to ride as well as a cavalryman, he says.

A pause. We are silent. Does anyone dare ask Wittgenstein Jr to elaborate?

Silence. We walk back through the wood. 

I have no bad memories of my father - not one, Wittgenstein Jr says. And then, He was, for me, the very model of excellence. 

Dense shade. The sun breaking through in jagged shapes. 

My father was a man of absolutes, Wittgenstein Jr says. Of certainties. A pause. A man of certainties can act, he says. A pause. Our trouble is that we have no certainties, and therefore cannot act. 

The towpath. Wittgenstein Jr's voice echoes as we pass beneath the bridge. Of course, my father was also a nervous man, in his way, he says. And then, All of us were nervous. My brothers and sisters and I inherited his nervousness.

What did he do?, one of us asks Wittgenstein Jr of his father. Who dared raise his voice? Ede. It was Ede who spoke. The reply: He was a businessman. A pause. He knew how to get things done. 

Wittgenstein Jr sees himself as a kind of businessman, he says. He has business with philosophy! And he means to have done with philosophy!

What about his mother? Who dares ask him that? But Wittgenstein Jr is in a confessional mood. It is possible to be too good, he says. My mother was too good.

We walk with Wittgenstein Jr through the meadows. He is in high spirits. 

A solitary horse in its field, standing by the fence. Wittgenstein Jr stops to greet him, leaning forward and breathing softly into its nostrils. This is how you greet a horse, he says. 

Wittgenstein Jr walks a step ahead of us, so that he can turn and face us as he talks. 

His unexpected gentleness. Why does he treat us so kindly, when he's so severe with the others?

His sweetness. Wittgenstein Jr is very mild today.

Wittgenstein Jr: We must empty ourselves. Nullify ourselves.

Wittgenstein Jr: We must lose our way. And then, That will be our happiness: our losing our way.

Wittgenstein Jr: We are without remedy. That's what we have to understand.

Judgement Day does not occur at the end of time, Wittgenstein Jr says. Today. It happens today.

Every day is the Day of Judgement, he says. The End of Days is this day. Don't you understand?

Katargesis: written on his blackboard in capital letters. And in small letters, below: The fulfilment of the Law. Fulfilment underlined. Then, in still smaller letters: The fulfilment of philosophy??

His headaches are Cambridge-headaches. His colds, Cambridge-colds. His miseries are invariably Cambridge-miseries, he says. And thought? Are his thoughts Cambridge-thoughts? No, he says. His thoughts have nothing to do with Cambridge.

Cambridge is a kind of pox, he says. Cambridge is a disease, he says. A kind of virus. We are all carriers of Cambridge, he says. Even he - Wittgenstein Jr - is a carrier of Cambridge.

We must innoculate him against Cambridge, he says. He must innoculate us! 

Don't worry, he says. He will save us from Cambridge, he says. He is thinking for us, he says. His thought is the opposite of Cambridge.

You have to watch out for Cambridge, he says. Cambridge is going to catch up with you. Cambridge is already on your trail, like a madman with a razor in his hand.

Cambridge is everywhere, he says. That's what we have to understand. Cambridge is in the head, he says, tapping his head. Cambridge is inside you, he says.

He speaks of the Cambridge cancer. He speaks of the Cambridge tumour. 

But why, then, did he come to Cambridge? Why here, rather than anything else? You need something to think against, he says.

The Cambridge noose, he says. The Cambridge gallows. That's what we have to avoid, he says. 

Cambridge is a smothering pillow, he says. Cambridge is a garrote.

He speaks of the Cambridge curb-stomp. Of Cambridge carbon-monoxide poisoning

His Cambridge-horror, as he calls it.

Cambridge is airless, he says. Cambridge: a dead zone. You'll find no thought here.

Cambridge: anti-thought, he says. The opposite of thought. Cambridge: the enemy of all serious reflection. 

Cambridge stupidity is a very clever kind of stupidity, he says.

His impracticality. His impatience. What would he do without his friends to manage his affairs? How did he cope before Cambridge? How did he live alone, in the big wide world?

He didn't cope, he says. He couldn't live alone. 

His dependency on others. Ede, bringing him a tray of food from the refrectory. Scroggins, shopping for him at Morrison's. The refectory: impossible, Wittgenstein Jr says. Morrison's: impossible.

His shyness. He doesn't really like interacting with the others, as he calls them. With the others, outside our circle.

He needs intermediaries between him and the others. We are his intermediaries, he says. His angels.

The view from his rooms. Streets of shops and houses. The river. To look away from the college: that's what Wittgenstein Jr. To turn his gaze elsewhere.

Is this where he will be able to work, really to work? Is this where fundamental work in philosophy will be possible?

It's quiet here. No one knows him here, in the tower. No one will knock on his door, who hasn't been invited.

We look at each other. Which one of us has been guilty of knocking at Wittgenstein Jr's door, when uninvited?

The noise is unbearable. The drunk undergraduates. He wants to move further from the college, he says. 

Why does he always involve us in the ordinary details of his life? Ede, ringing the university authorities to find new rooms. Scroggins, arranging the removal van. The Kirwin twins helping the removal men load up the van. Whitmarsh organising a transfer of utilities, Titmuss a new phone-line. Chakrabarti helps Wittgenstein Jr find furniture on Ebay. Doyle helps him find pots, pans and utensils. Benwell pounds up the flights of stairs to Wittgenstein Jr's new room, having organised his mail to be directed. Leach perched on a window-seat, co-ordinating all the activity.

But what's it got to do with us?

To him, ethics too quickly becomes preaching. Morality is a matter for life, not for writing, he says. 

He must train our instincts, he says. We must be instinctively good. 

Our most basic impulse must incline us towards goodness, he says.

We don't need morals, he says. Do we see?

Our impulses must be right. Our feelings. Because goodness lies there, he says. At the level of impulse. At the level of feeling.

Everything must come from the heart, he says.

The fundamental problems of life can only be discussed, he says. You can't write about them.

Beware the temptation to write, he says. Because writing is also that: a temptation.

We must speak, Wittgenstein Jr. We must learn to speak. To all of us: Do you know what it means to speak?

Life is death, he says.

Self-disgust is the beginning of wisdom, he says.

Really, we must destroy ourselves, if we are to think, he says.

His notebooks are full of editorial remarks, he says. Full of exhortations. Work harder! You must be less superficial!

Wittgenstein Jr does not so much write, he says, as exhort himself to write.

He does not so much think, he says, as exhort himself to think.

Thought cannot be reached, he says. True thoughts cannot be reached.

As thinkers, we are like the birds which set out to fly across the Dead Sea and drop from the sky in exhaustion.

Thought is like a background which cannot become a foreground, he says. Thought can only be seen from the corner of your eye.

Minton, the tutor in philosophy in our college: an idiot, Wittgenstein Jr says.

Gould, Merron and Rose, the tutors in philosophy at Deerborn College: likewise idiots, Wittgenstein Jr says.

Carr, Knowles and the rest of the tutors in philosophy at Osterley College, and Sherbourne College: Idiots, the lot of them, Wittgenstein Jr says.

Cambridge tutors in philosophy in general, and Cambridge lecturers in philosophy in general: Idiots!, he says. Scoundrels!

The members of the Cambridge Philosophical Circle: philosophical abortions!, he says. Philosophical idiots!

Tutors and lecturers in philosophy from the UK in general. Possessed by idiocy!, he says. Too good for hanging!

His barely concealed contempt for Professor Collins, the Wilson Chair of Meta-Ethics. He 'does philosophy', Wittgenstein Jr says, making the quotation marks audible.

His outright horror for Professor Hussey, the Winterbottom Chair of Philosophical Psychology. He coasts, Wittgenstein Jr says. He does nothing but coast.

His unconcealed distate for Professor Wilkes, the Slocumb Chair of the Philosophy of Mathematics. A dross-monger.

His extreme personal antipathy towards Professor Thacker, the Frobischer-Weekes Chair of Philosophical Anthropology. A human dung-heap.

His seething horror for Professor O'Keefe, the Whewell Chair of Artificial Intelligence. A purveyor of shit.

His disdainful hauteur for Professor Jordan, the Anderson-Dear Chair of Epistemological Systems. A philosophical clot.

His rage-flecked dismissal of Professor Miller, the Curley Chair in the Philosophy of Mind. An ocean of stupidity.

The certainty that he is dying. His desire for death. All that remains of his faith, he says.

God is death, he says. Do you understand that? God means: an end to suffering.

How much time is left to him? A couple of months, he says. Sometimes, more optimistically: a couple of years.

His mental suffering must be matched by a commensurate physical suffering. It must be, he says.

He must be dying. He must be mortally ill.