Wittgenstein also had a new identity, as he had hoped for. But his family was dismayed and could not understand why he wanted to become a primary school teacher. His sister remarked that it was like using a precision instrument to open crates. For Wittgenstein, on the other hand, his hardships had given his life meaning, which he would not give up by returning to complete security.
His father had shrewdly invested in American bonds before the war, and he was now one of the richest men in Europe. But within a month, he disposed of his whole estate, insisting on making over his inheritance to his siblings. Indeed, he insisted repeatedly on ensuring that there was no possibility of his retaining anything. He also moved away from his parents' property. However, he continued to be disoriented and was often suicidal. He wanted Engelmann or Russell to visit as soon as possible, but the former was struggling to obtain a Czechoslovakian passport, and the latter was lecturing. Furthermore, Russell's political stance presented the possibility that he would not be allowed to leave the country. Pinsent, of course, was dead. He looked up Loos, but was horrified that he had been 'infected with the most virulent bogus intellectualism.' In his teacher's training classes he, at the age of thirty, was surrounded by teenagers. He was also discomfited by the effects his reputation as a member of the rich Wittgenstein family had on him.
The reception of the Tractatus also troubled him. Taking it to a new publisher, he applied to Russell for a recommendation, feeling sure that the publishers would not be able to understand it. The publisher accepted on condition that Wittgenstein would pay for the printing, but Wittgenstein had no money at this time and in any case would have refused, wishing the book to go out in the normal way and on its own merits.
Frege continued to question the terminology of the Tractatus, and also raised concerns about its purpose. Some remarks by Wittgenstein in the preface, as well as his own experience of the book, gave him the impression that it could be properly understood only by those who had already thought in the same way. Hence, it seemed to him more of an artistic achievement, one attained by the particular form the thoughts were couched in, rather than a scientific one which revealed new thoughts to people. Frege was somewhat appeased in one way: he had complained that in Wittgenstein's terminology "The world is everything that is the case" and "The world is the totality of facts" were identical propositions. Now, however, Wittgenstein, while conceding that the propositions were similar in meaning, claimed that they were distinct in that he had associated different ideas with them. Frege had been thinking along similar lines and concurred that propositions with identical meanings could be meaningfully put side by side.
Wittgenstein asked Frege to recommend the Tractatus to a journal publisher, but Frege, while willing to make some efforts, wrote back that he thought them unlikely to succeed, and moreover refused to recommend the work specifically apart from commending Wittgenstein in general on the grounds that he did not understand enough of it. He suggested that the work be supplemented with a motivation in the form of a problem to be solved and published in sections rather than as a whole. Wittgenstein refused.
He next applied to Ficker to publish it in Der Brenner, a literary journal. The response was positive enough for him to send Ficker the manuscript and add some explanation of the meaning in a letter:
...the point of the book is ethical.... [M]y work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely the 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.
Ficker was less than pleased with this, and, concerned with financial viability, he gave no definite answer but warned that he might not be able to print it. He wrote that he had applied to colleagues about it and had asked Rilke to find a publisher. He also wished to consult a professor of philosophy. This threw Wittgenstein into despair; he would permit Ficker to show it to a professor if he liked, but thought that it would be casting pearls before swine, and believed it would not be published. Alarmed, Ficker assured Wittgenstein (to whom he owed a favour in any case) that he would see it printed, but after further wrangling and Wittgenstein's refusing to have it published at financial risk to Ficker, nothing came of it.
Wittgenstein's despair was alleviated somewhat when he moved in with the Sjoegrens, a family that were friends of the Wittgensteins. Wittgenstein was to serve the role of the 'man of the house', the household being headed by a widow who was trying to raise three sons. This arrangement was to an extent successful, and Wittgenstein had a lasting influence on the children. One took up the career of a mechanic on his advice instead of studying at a university. Wittgenstein was later to encourage "honest trades" in place of the privileged positions the elites were traditionally expected to occupy, having some influence in this direction in the 1930s and 1940s.
Russell and Wittgenstein now arranged to meet in The Hague, not without difficulty. To fund Wittgenstein for this purpose, Russell bought some furniture and books Wittgenstein had left in Cambridge. When the meeting eventually took place, a week of intense discussion followed. Russell refused to accept Wittgenstein's claim that any assertion about the world as a whole was meaningless. Russell retorted that it was meaningful and true to say that "there are at least three things in the world". He made three ink blobs on a piece of paper and exhorted Wittgenstein to accept the statement, but Wittgenstein refused; though he admitted that there were three blobs on the page, he would not confess that the assertion could be transferred to the world as a whole.
Russell was also set against the "mystical" doctrine that it was possible to show what cannot be said. In this regard he remarked, "... I think (although he wouldn't agree) that what he likes best in mysticism is its power to make him stop thinking." Russell was impressed enough to write an introduction to the book, however, and Russell's reputation would almost guarantee the publication of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein was disappointed by the criticisms and clarifications Russell made in the introduction, however, as well as by what was lost in the introduction's translation into German. He informed the publisher he was trying to convince at that time that Russell's introduction was not to be included in the publication and was only to frame the publisher's perspective. Wittgenstein had guessed that this would result in its rejection, and so it turned out. His attitude was that he didn't care if it were published far in the future as long as it was "a work of the highest rank"; otherwise, he didn't care to see it published. Russell was unfazed by Wittgenstein's handling of the introduction, offering to have the book published in England.
In April he left the Sjoegrens'; it was believed at the time that the widow had fallen in love with him and that this had caused him to leave. Another bout of self-recrimination and depression ensued. His correspondence with Engelmann shows that both considered a keen awareness of one's own failings an essential aspect of a 'religious attitude' and a decent life. Their ethical standard required that one recognize that the cause of unhappiness, namely discrepancies between oneself and 'life as it is' , sprang from one's own failings. Furthermore, their ethic was a Kantian, deontological one, radically unconcerned with what 'works'. Engelmann now recommended to Wittgenstein that he write out a 'confession', with an account of how he should have behaved in specific instances. This, Engelmann thought, would clear Wittgenstein's mind. He also wrote that suicide is always a mistake because by it one forgoes any possibilities of self-correction. Wittgenstein thanked Engelmann, more for his description of his own efforts than for the advice. He was to put this method into action in later years, however.
Wittgenstein completed his teacher training without incident and with considerable merit, although not without internal wrangling about his poor social skills. His training had proceeded according to the socialist and republican principles which were in favour among Austrian intellectuals in the post-war period. This School Reform Movement, as it was known, did not resonate particularly with Wittgenstein, not for that matter with Haensel, his fellow prisoner of war in Italy who was still active in education and with whom Wittgenstein still dealt regularly. Wittgenstein disapproved of secularism and faith in political and social reform, but he was not greatly in favour of the Catholic establishment with which Haensel identified either.
Frege continued to ask for clarification of the Tractatus and for reasons why Wittgenstein had seen grounds for linking idealism with Frege's realism. There is no indication that he had properly understood it by the time he died four years later. Monk asserts that the question of idealism and realism in the Tractatus is closely linked to the ethical position of Engelmann and Wittgenstein: "I am my world, so if I am unhappy about the world, the only way in which I can do anything decisive about it is to change myself."
Despite the fact that Russell, Frege, and the publishers he had applied to found the Tractatus confused, and the problems resulting from Wittgenstein's own insistence that the verbal expression of these metaphysics can only result in nonsense, he continued to consider it irrefutable. He continued to consider the external events which put pressure on him - such as Pinsent's death - irrelevant to solving his problems, wishing more to 'settle accounts with himself'. To this end he worked as a gardener at a monastery in the interim before he got a teaching post.
No comments:
Post a Comment