Wittgenstein Jr

My dream: the sky is Wittgenstein’s face. The sky: his great face, with closed eyes. The sky, his mouth, is whispering, but we cannot hear what he says. The sky, his mouth, is shouting, but mutely, mutely, and we can’t hear what he says.

My dream: the entirety of Cambridge, in a giant snowglobe, and Wittgenstein shaking the snowglobe. Wittgenstein, a giant child, tears running down his cheeks, shaking the snowglobe.

My dream: a deathly white Wittgenstein, eyes closed, arms folded over his chest, being carried in an open casket by a procession of dons. A funeral? But Wittgenstein’s eyes open. He is awake, but dead. Death has woken up. Death has awoken in him.

My dream: we are all falling, falling, Wittgenstein amongst us, like a team of free fall parachutists. Falling, holding hands in a circle, falling through the hours and the days, but there’s no ground rushing up to meet us.

My dream. He pours us each a mug full of a sweet milky drink, and watches us lovingly as we sip. It's hemlock, he says. He’s going to save us from ourselves. He’s going to save us from what the world will make of us. He’s going to save our innocence by preserving us in innocence. And as we drink, we begin to feel drowsy. As we drink, we fall off our stools, one by one.

His hands. Refined. Not delicate, exactly. Wise. Is that the word?

The wisdom of his hands. A philosopher’s hands.

To be touched by those hands. Those hands which know. To have one of them rest on your forehead.

He speaks of the difficulty even of keeping hold of philosophical problems.

He's silent, eyes closed, jaw in hand, shaking his bent head slowly.

Wittgenstein is flagging. What can I do? What can I be for him?

To be the Atlas who supports Wittgenstein's thought on my shoulders. To carry Wittgenstein. To support him.

Wittgenstein in a deckchair, head tilted back, eyes half closed. Silence.

Wittgenstein seems to be at rest. But is he really at rest? Is he working on something? A philosophical problem? A moral problem?

Is he resting? Is he able to rest? That's what we want to give him: the ability to rest. That's what I want: to be the one who lets him rest. To be the one who might give him rest.

Truth was a question of rectitude, for the ancients, he says. Of posture. The thinker stood in a certain way, just as he thought in a certain way. The thinker lived in a certain way ...

Truth will have nothing to do with us. Truth has hidden its face from us.

He will pass through the gut of Cambridge, he says. He is indigestible.

As for us ...

The Cambridge trap is closing around him, he says. Good! Let it close! The noose of Cambridge is being tightened around his neck. Good! Let them kick away the stool!

He’s willingly exposing himself to the Cambridge plague, he says. He is willingly letting himself undergo the Cambridge lobotomy, he says. He’s piloting his thought-plane right into the heart of the Cambridge storm, he says.

He has come to Cambridge to be close to the thieves, Wittgenstein 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.

No, he didn’t come to Cambridge to be among the best minds in the world, he says. He knew perfectly well that there were no minds at Cambridge, and nor could there be any minds at Cambridge, he says. He was very clear about that, long before he came to Cambridge: that there was no thought whatsoever in Cambridge, and that there hadn’t been any thought for some time in Cambridge, he says.

Then why did he come to Cambridge? He came to Cambridge because Cambridge was a place without thought, he says. He came to the university because it was the calm eye in the storm of English stupidity, he says. He came here precisely because he wanted to be at the heart of English stupidity he says.

Cambridge is a test, he says. His test. He has come to the place where English stupidity is at its strongest, he says. At its most concentrated. He’s come to test himself against English stupidity. To bring himself into collision with English stupidity. He’s come to Cambridge to discover the momentum he needs to think in pushing against English stupidity. Really, the thinker needs adverse conditions in order to think, he says. Really the thinker rises to his height when he thinks against something, he says. And Cambridge, as the incarnation of English stupidity, is what he needs to think against, he says.

That there is no thought whatsoever in Cambridge is really the condition for him being able to think in Cambridge. That Cambridge is a thought-void, a thought-abyss, is really only the possibility of his being able to think in Cambridge, he says. Here where thought has disappeared, there will be thought, he says. Here where the conditions for thought have been utterly eradicated, the conditions for thought will be born anew, he says, that’s the paradox.

He longs to make an enemy of one of us. He longs to have antagonised one of us.

A Judas. Is there a Judas in our midst? Is there anyone willing to betray him? To hand him over to the authorities?

He speaks of being used by thought, as an old man uses his staff.

To throw himself at the feet of life.

We cannot think by ourselves, he says, just as we cannot create ourselves ...

Divine help: that’s what we need.

We must live in obscurity, Wittgenstein says. We must live like toads under stones, he says. No one must lift up the stone.

The end of philosophy will be brought about by a tiny and insignificant gesture, he says. The aim is to find this gesture.

Our skies are darkening. None of us will know who we are, he says.

Our sky is falling on our heads. Soon, there will be no more sky. We will not understand what is above us.

Philosophy is a deluge, he says. Philosophy is rain, constantly falling.

Philosophy, always more philosophy, pouring over the ground already waterlogged with philosophy.

How late it is! How close to the end! How can anything else happen? How can another thing dare happen?

Time is running out, he says. There’s no time left: isn’t this clear?

Do we think he could do write anything without the will of God?

The will to pray is the will to think, he says.

The will to be saved is the condition of thinking, he says.

Could it be that philosophy has already ended, and no one knows it? Could it be that our world has already ended, and no one knows it (no one but him)? 

Who will strike him through?, he says. Who will cross him out? Isn't that God's role: to strike him through? To cross him out?

Are we listening?, he wonders. Are we paying attention? He wants co-operation, he says. He wants us to think together.

Soon, he says. Soon. The world will change. The world will not know it, but it will have been changed.

He wants those who will understand what has changed. Those with whom he can share the secret.

‘Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy’: that's what Pascal had inscribed on his posthumous memorial.

We, who know nothing of grief, can know nothing of joy, either.

His hatred of self-consciousness. Of self-awareness.

Absorption, that's his ideal. The mind must be absorbed in its problem.

But when the mind's problem is the mind? When the mind’s problem is the very impossibility of absorption? 

Of course, it is a terrible sign that one should talk about doing philosophy.

He must not perform the role of the philosopher. But that's all he does: perform the role of the philosopher.

The danger that the wish to discard performance is itself a kind of performance. The danger that the wish to leave philosophy behind is itself a kind of philosophy.

Religion: that's where thought comes to rest, he says.

In the storm of the world, the ark of thought will anchor on the mountain of religion.

We know nothing of fate, he says. Nothing of fatality. We do not understand what it means to be destined.

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.

Punishment. That’s what he wants. A sense of an enemy.

He wants to be seen to sin against something. To have transgressed something.

He wants a sense that there are limits. That there are some things which are intolerable.

Thought should be a scandal: don’t we see that? Philosophy itself should be intolerable.

But thought is all too tolerable, he says. Philosophy is all too permissible.

We are impassive, he says. There is no expressiveness to our faces. Barely any contours.

He finds us anonymous, he says. Interchangeable. We live in a haze, like a cloud of midges.

We are without individuality, he says. Without definition. Who but our parents could really tell us apart?

We’ve left him behind, he says. He can see that. We’ve danced ahead of him. He was a distraction for us, that’s all, he says. A kind of toy. We are children, after all. Children only know how to play with philosophy.

But perhaps there is a lesson in that, too, he says. Perhaps God put us in front of him for a reason.

The end. No, he cannot go towards it on his own.

He needs someone to be with him at the end, he says. He needs to be accompanied, so he’s not alone at the end.

He needs an audience, he says. He needs witnesses. He needs those who will understand what it means to bring philosophy to its end.

In the shadowless summer, we will live in innocence, he says. In lightness. In grace.

And our souls will be transparent like the wings of summer insects.

And we will think as birds flit from branch to branch. We will think together like fish in shoals, nuzzling the surface. We will share a thought of life that is indistinguishable from life. We will share a thought that lives, a life that thinks ...

And the Logik will live, he says. The Logik will be alive at last, in the never-ending summer.

Your soul will be light, he says. Your soul will weigh nothing in the Norwegian summer. You will feel your soul rising in the Norwegian summer. All souls will rise up into the air like fire-balloons.

And there will be silence. There will be nothing you need to say.

We’ll barely sleep. There’ll be no need for sleep, in the never-ending day.

There’ll be no need to rest. No need to dream.

The stars will dream, above the sky. The satellites will dream for us, as they fall through space.

Our hearts will be bright. Our hearts will pulse like jellyfish in the sunlit waters. And pale stars will show in the upper heavens. And God’s angels will be there, just above the sky. And God’s throne will stand. And God’s face will no longer be hidden. And God will be everywhere, just as light is everywhere. There’ll be not a corner of darkness where the devil might hide.

Our innocence, he says. Our simplicity.

We have been spared, he says. God has spared us.

Is it imbecility he sees on our faces? No. It’s innocence. Is it stupidity he sees on our faces? No. It’s depthlessness. It’s grace.

Nothing accumulates inside us. Nothing settles inside us. Wisdom: what do we know of that?

We are not even cursed. We are not even damned. Necessity: what does this mean to us? Destiny?

We’ve never been tried. Never been tested. The troubles of the world part before us like the Red Sea before Moses.

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

For your heart to be full. For your eyes to brim with tears – fresh tears.

That’s how we’ll melt the splinters in our eyes. In our hearts.

The splinters of the devil’s mirror lie in our eyes and in our hearts, his brother told him.

It is only by weeping – really weeping, with tears of repentance – that you will flush the splinters from your eye, his brother said. And it will only by loving – really loving, on your hands and knees – that you will bleed the splinters from his heart.

How could he pray?, he asks. His prayers would be insincere, he says. How could they be anything but be insincere?

How could he ask God for help?, he asks. His petitions would be improper, he says. How could they be anything but improper?

Besides, the really pious help themselves, he says. They don’t call upon God for assistance.

His teaching.

He’s gone too far, and not far enough. He has no choice but to continue.

What he is doing is only negative work, he says. He is doing something by undoing it.

There is no positive doctrine in his thought, he says. Philosophy has nothing to discover. Don’t we understand that he is teaching nothing?

His disdain for us. His froideur.

He is withdrawing from us. He is holding us at a distance. But isn’t it, by so doing, drawing us towards him? He retreats, and we follow. He retreats yet further – he withdraws, but we are drawn with him. His retreat is also our advance. At the very moment he seemed to have given up hope in us, isn’t hope, at last, possible? At the moment his face has closed to us, haven’t we begun to desire to be seen by him? Heeded by him?

Are we alive? Is it that we, all along, were alive, and he was not? Are we the clue? Were we the gateway out of philosophy?

Perhaps the clue is in our faces. Perhaps it is there, right there.

Perhaps the clue is in our laughter. If he could only get to our laughter ...

Religion is about trust, he says. It has nothing to do with superstition.

And then, in a whisper: The temptation to curse God, he says, when it is we ourselves we should curse.

A pause.

The fear: he cannot save himself. But he cannot turn to God, either, for his salvation.

How can he believe in the Resurrection? In his own resurrection?

Perhaps his despair is the fault of the wrong view of life. But how will he attain it: the right view of life?

Repentance: yes, that's what is necessary, if he is ever to be honest and decent in his philosophy.

No, the word, God does not mean God anymore. The word, God means anything but God. 

None of us know what is meant by thought, nor by the loss of thought.

None of us know anything of God, he says, nor of the loss of God ...