Lovers of Sophia

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by Jason Reza Jorjani


  tell us what human beings are contingently at present, but where the limits of possibility lie for any and all human thought and action. These limits are defined by phenomenological conditions of

  existence that are so obvious as to escape notice unless we compare

  ourselves, collectively, to other forms of life – such as various animals or other intelligent beings very different from ourselves. Note these

  passages in the Investigations.56 In the last of them57 the reference to

  “this complicated form of life” is clearly indicative of the same thing that Wittgenstein refers to in the first passage58 as the “common

  behavior of mankind.”

  While on other occasions he may loosely use “form of life”

  synonymously with “language game”, so that we humans have

  as many forms of life as language games, it is not these which are

  the “given” that “has to be accepted.” Individual human beings can

  54 Ibid., 190-1.

  55 Ibid., 211, 234.

  56 Wittgenstein,

  Philosophical Investigation, 206, 415; xi, 190, 192, 193; II:i, 148.

  57 Ibid., II: i, 148.

  58 Ibid., 206.

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  grow up in more than one culture, or choose to move and live in

  a different culture than that in which they grew up. Thus when

  Wittgenstein refers to form s of life as that which must be accepted without any further grounds of justification,59 what he means is that

  we could not understand a talking lion60 because lions are “beings

  different from ourselves”.61 Some intelligent, language using feline species would still remain largely incomprehensible to us, because

  it is another form of life. While we might be able to have limited communication with something like talking lions, since we broadly

  share with them some mammalian behavior, Wittgenstein believes

  that communication with certain intelligent alien life forms would

  be utterly impossible:

  ‘These men would have nothing human about them.’ Why? – We

  could not possibly make ourselves understood to them. Not even

  as we can to a dog. We could not find our feet with them.

  And yet there surely could be such beings, who in other respects

  were human.62

  What Wittgenstein means by “who in other respects were human” is

  that these beings undertake certain activities that only superficial y appear similar to human activities as opposed to those of mere

  animals who lack intelligent consciousness. Presumably, these

  activities would include sophisticated purposive manipulation of

  the natural environment, something like agriculture, city building,

  and so forth. This causes the interlocutor to refer to them as “men”

  who nevertheless “have nothing human about them”.

  The key sentence of the passage above is very badly translated

  as: “We could not find our feet with them.” In the original German

  59 Ibid., II: xi, 192.

  60 Ibid., xi, 190.

  61 Ibid., xi, 193.

  62 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007), 390.

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  it reads “Wir könnten uns nicht in sie finden.” This should be

  literal y translated as: “We could not find ourselves within them.”

  Wittgenstein is referring to a phenomenological quality of conscious

  interiority that contrasts with the outward, merely superficial man-

  like activities of these intelligent aliens. As noted above, the “soul”

  does not preexist language games but emerges from out of them,

  and language games are in turn defined by certain facts of nature.

  Consequently: “...The human body is the best picture of the human

  soul.”63 Non-human beings, such as those from this passage in

  Zettel,64 have different ‘souls’ than human beings, not on account of their culture but on account of the different facts of nature that

  frame their form of life and the language games that they can play

  within it.

  This last point is also the undoing of any attempt to weave an

  ethics out of the thought of the latter Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein

  claims that: “What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could

  say – forms of life.”65 This idea that forms of life are “the given”

  and must be “accepted” would seem to in itself preclude ethics by

  denying individual responsibility. While the following passage from

  On Certainty checks this misinterpretation, it only does so in a way that is equal y destructive of the idea of Justice:

  “But is there then no objective truth? ...” An empirical proposition

  can be tested” (we say) But how? and through what? What counts as its test? –”But is this an adequate test? And, if so, must it not

  be recognizable as such in logic?”

  –As if giving grounds did not come to an end sometime. But the

  end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded

  way of acting.66

  63 Wittgenstein,

  Philosophical Investigations, II: iv, 152.

  64 Wittgenstein,

  Zettel.

  65 Wittgenstein,

  Philosophical Investigations, II: xi, 192.

  66 Wittgenstein,

  On Certainty, 108-110.

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  The beliefs according to which we act are not based upon such

  logical tautologies as A = B, B = C, therefore A = C or 2+2 = 4 = 1+3.

  None of them have the timeless certainty of a priori logical truths,

  they can only be affirmed in deed. In other words, by saying that

  we cannot get outside of the “form” within the context of which we

  always already experience “life”, Wittgenstein only means that we cannot do so until and unless we, in fact, cease to be human beings

  and become some other kind of creatures.

  We so-called ‘human’ beings could technological y modify

  ourselves into becoming life forms as ‘alien’ to what we are now as any beings lurking in the depths of uncharted space. The Wittgensteinian

  “human form of life” is not, in the end, an inviolable “given” that

  must be “accepted”. It is not a “form” of life in the Aristotelian sense, not an immanent universal that guides the development of specific

  biological genera in accordance with some predetermined end. The

  quote from Zettel above certainly makes it clear that Wittgenstein does not view it as a “form” that guides convergent evolution across

  the cosmos. Man’s technological prowess has attained mastery not

  only over all other life forms on Earth, but now even over his own,

  which was supposed to have been the most sacredly fixed idea in the

  Divine Intellect.

  Human history thus far does not suggest that our common

  ‘humanity’ has yet been understood as the basis for a universal

  ethics of the kind sought by Pythagoras and Socrates at the dawn of

  Philosophy. Furthermore, it is not as if “Humanity” is something that

  we must all ultimately realize that we share in common, and that it

  is only a matter of time before we come to sufficient self-knowledge

  so as to stop tearing each other to pieces in ever more violent and

  expansive wars. The twentieth century was the most violent, and the

  twenty first has not gotten off to a good start. In the end, the ultimate realization of our so-called ‘humani
ty’ will real y be an awakening to the terribly liberating fact that Man alone among the animals is that

  creature who will be whatever he wil s himself to be. We are likely

  to disagree amongst ourselves about what that is, to disagree more

  violently than ever because there will be more at stake than in any

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  previous conflict of ideals, and thence could ensue the most total

  war of all – ending perhaps in an artificial speciation of the human

  race. This need not happen, but it is possible. Wittgenstein certainly makes no case for it being anything other than a contingency of

  history whether or not this happens.

  The packed earth not only channels the river’s water, but may

  be eroded by it as wel . A door cannot be opened or shut without

  hinges, but swinging a door hard and fast enough could warp or

  break the hinges. The point of these Wittgensteinian analogies is

  that the human form of life has thus far provided the context for our

  cultural development, culminating in advanced technologies such as

  genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, but our use of these

  technologies may in turn so drastical y change the human form

  of life that it becomes some other life form altogether. This means

  that Wittgenstein’s notion of a form of life is not something that can ground a new Humanist ethics. Patterns of behavior may, as a matter

  of fact, overlap significantly enough to allow for mutual cooperation, or they might not – in which case we are left with cunning, coercion

  or brute force.

  What is worse is that Wittgenstein seems never to have been

  able to reconcile himself to the grave ethical implications of his

  deconstructive method. There are a number of passages in the notes

  and transcribed lectures of Wittgenstein’s latter period that echo

  the mystical deference to a ‘God Almighty’ that I have argued, in

  the first section of this paper, is central to his failure to develop a coherent ethics within the context of the worldview of the Tractatus.

  The tenor of these notes attests to their being at least as important

  to Wittgenstein as his formal philosophical writings, such as the

  Investigations and On Certainty.

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  3. Wittgenstein’s Persisting Belief That Ethics

  Requires Theistic Faith

  Wittgenstein’s tractarian views on God and the necessarily theistic

  grounds of ethics were basical y unchanged when he returned

  to Cambridge in 1929. In his “Lecture on Ethics” he discusses his

  personal experiences of feeling absolutely safe from any possible

  harm on account of being in the hands of God, as well as his wonder

  at the existence of the world as if it were God’s creation and, final y, of his feeling absolutely guilty in the eyes of God. Even after his

  return to philosophy in 1929, Wittgenstein seems to believe that

  ethics treats only of “absolute value”, and that otherwise there is no ethics at al .67 Wittgenstein claims that ethics is supernatural, and

  that the writing of a book that real y treated ethics could not but

  be a divine miracle.68 In a passage from his notebooks of the same

  period, Wittgenstein writes: “If something is good it is also divine.

  In a strange way this sums up my ethics. Only the supernatural can

  express the Supernatural.”69 At the heart of this outlook is a view that human beings cannot better themselves or treat each other justly

  without some ‘God’ or higher non-human intervention.

  Wittgenstein experienced a religious conversion during the

  First World War, much inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s The Gospel in

  Brief (as well as by the mysticism of Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer).70 He wanted to enter the priesthood after

  his completion of the Tractatus, and settled for the second best of schoolteacher because it afforded him an opportunity to read the

  67 “Lecture on Ethics” in Anthony Kenny (Editor), The Wittgenstein Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1994/2002), 289-290.

  68 Ibid., 291.

  69 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 3.

  70 Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), 21; Clack, An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion, 31-32.

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  Gospels to young children.71 He was a lifelong reader of the Gospels.

  Wittgenstein’s confession of his sins to others was surely religiously motivated, and his giving away his inherited wealth probably

  was as wel .72 He referred to himself as ‘in a sense a Christian’ in

  conversations with his intimate friend Maurice Drury.73 He viewed

  belief in a Last Judgment as profoundly valuable if not altogether

  personal y compelling.74 All of this may have been motivated by the

  juxtaposition of Wittgenstein’s own austere moral sensibility and his

  view that a merely human ethics is impossible.

  What is most significant for the purposes of this paper is

  that Wittgenstein continued to hold this view even after his

  deconstruction of the Tractatus. According to Norman Malcolm,

  who was an acquaintance of Wittgenstein during his latter years, Wittgenstein personal y expressed to him “a sense of the helplessness

  of human beings to make themselves better” without some faith in

  Divine Judgment and Salvation.75 At least five passages from his

  later notes on matters of ‘Culture and Value’ attest that Wittgenstein himself was at the very least strongly tempted into embracing such a

  faith, and into viewing human endeavor as worthless in the absence

  of it. The first and second are from 1937,76 the third from 1944/45,77

  the fourth from 1946,78 and the fifth from a year later in 1947 has

  Wittgenstein reflecting on the work of a lifetime nearing its end (in

  1951).79

  We can draw several conclusions from these notes taken

  collectively. While Wittgenstein stresses the importance of changing

  one’s life, he seems to believe that this is as impossible to do in the 71 Malcolm,

  Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View, 9.

  72 Ibid.

  73 Ibid., 9-11.

  74 Clack,

  An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion, 65-76.

  75 Malcolm,

  Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View, 9.

  76 Wittgenstein,

  Culture and Value, 32-33.

  77 Ibid., 46.

  78 Ibid., 53.

  79 Ibid., 57-58.

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  lovers of sophia

  absence of religious faith in God as it is to forge cold iron.80 He

  views his own life’s work as having been entirely in vain unless the

  Divine has somehow ordained or graced it “from above”.81 This is

  because “wisdom” is merely speculative human intelligence, and

  as such, it is worth nothing.82 In fact, it is worse than valueless, it is actual y a living hell to be damned to the uncertainty of human wisdom.83 Despite the entire thrust of his analysis in On Certainty (discussed above), Wittgenstein seems unable to relinquish the

  desire for the absolute certainty that is characteristic of religious faith. This certainty is above and beyond all language games in the

  sense that, once one arrives at it no change of life circumstances

  whatsoever should cause one to re
evaluate or abandon it.84 In

  terms of Wittgenstein’s own latter thought, his attraction to the

  once-and-for-all certitude of faith amounts to “aspect blindness”

  – a phenomenon that Wittgenstein discusses towards the end of

  Philosophical Investigations.85 By analogy, it is as if one is only able to see the duck-rabbit as a duck, even once the rabbit aspect has been

  pointed out as also implicated by the ambiguous lines in the gestalt

  figure.

  In these passages, Wittgenstein claims that in so far as we

  experience great suffering in life we are each utterly lost, helpless, and condemned to infernal solitude unless there is a Divine Savior

  and Redeemer.86 Even when Wittgenstein writes of making a

  confession of one’s failings to other human beings, as he himself felt compelled to do, it is only a means of purging the heart of human

  vanity and opening it up to the redeeming grace of the Savior. In

  1945, only 6 years before his death, Wittgenstein clearly believed that God alone may judge us or “save us” (from our sins); we should not

  80 Ibid., 53.

  81 Ibid., 57-58.

  82 Ibid., 33.

  83 Ibid.

  84 Ibid., 32-33, 53.

  85 Wittgenstein,

  Philosophical Investigations, II: xi, 182.

  86 Wittgenstein,

  Culture and Value, 33, 46.

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  judge each other or “be furious even at Hitler”, because “we are all

  wicked children”.87

  This view of worldly human life as a kind of imprisonment away

  from God’s grace, as a cage against the wal s of which one must beat

  oneself senseless, is on a continuum with the ascetic mysticism of

  the Tractatus. It should not have survived Wittgenstein’s critique of his early philosophy. The fact that it did cal s Wittgenstein’s

  latter thought into question, and it precludes the development of

  something like a starkly Sartrean existentialist ethics on the basis

  of the Investigations or On Certainty. As unpleasant as it might be, these religious writings strongly suggest that Wittgenstein was a

  fundamental y conflicted thinker who never sorted out the first

  thing about what he real y believed. So far as we can tell from all that he left us, he died a splintered man with a makeshift worldview.

  87 Ibid., 46.

  339

  BLACK SUNRISE

  Sometime during the last days of the Second World War,

 

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