Wittgenstein Jr

by Lars Iyer

  We are parts of things: that’s our luck, he says. The philosopher’s misfortune is to be a part of nothing. To stand apart from everything.

  To renounce the pomps and vanity of the world, as St Paul said. I die daily: just think what that would really mean, Wittgenstein says.

  The great risk is that we will lose our souls, Wittgenstein says. There are very few people who do not lose their souls. It will happen to us. Not now, perhaps, but eventually. We will be tested. We may gain the whole world, he says—and he’s sure many of us will, with our well-off families and our wealth of connections—but this matters little if we lose our souls.

  Okulu’s organ recital.

  Dim light. Medieval glass. The fan-vaulted ceiling.

  We’re supposed to feel awe, Ede says, looking round the gloom. We’re supposed to feel dwarfed.

  EDE: The mysterium tremendum. Transcendence and all that. The depth of history! Of tradition! Of religion! The mystique of old England, and so on. Well, there is no mystery. We’re all out in the open now.

  We survey the audience. The Kirwins, in tracksuits. (EDE: You would have thought they’d have made some effort!) Scroggins, half asleep. (EDE: He’s high as a kite. You can see it.)

  A spotlight over the organ.

  EDE: Oh God—culture! Remind me why we came again?

  Okulu, bowing to the audience. Taking his seat.

  Rolling waves of Bach in the near-darkness.

  The low notes get him right in the gut, Ede says. They’re loosening his bowels.

  The bass notes are giving him an erection, Mulberry says.

  We notice Wittgenstein below us, hands clasped over his knee. The nape of his neck, smooth and sallow next to the collar of his crisp white shirt.

  MULBERRY: Calm yourself, Peters.

  ME: Look how moved he is. His eyes are closed. What’s wrong with us, that we don’t feel that way?

  EDE: We’re English. There’s no cure for that.

  • • •

  Walking back. Wittgenstein ahead of us.

  He never feels anything you’re supposed to feel, Ede says.

  All this art! Music! All these experiences!

  I tell him I was moved. Very moved.

  EDE: It’s because you want to be overawed, Peters. That’s what culture is for: overawing people like you.

  Scroggins and the Kirwins catch up with us.

  EDE (quietly): Oh God!

  Discussion. Our plans for the Christmas break. A family safari in the heart of Zambia (the Kirwins). Swimming with sharks off the coast of Mauritius (Scroggins). Skiing in the Rockies (Ede—but he’s sick of skiing, he says) …

  KIRWIN A: Where are you going, Peters? Yorkshire?

  KIRWIN B: How’s the skiing in Yorkshire, Peters?

  KIRWIN A: You’re really a bit of a peasant, aren’t you, Peters?

  EDE: Just because Peters isn’t an aristo!

  KIRWIN B: Well, we’re not aristos, technically speaking.

  You have to be in Burke’s book of peerages to be an aristo.

  KIRWIN A: Yes, but we’re hardly scholarship boys, are we?

  We haven’t known poverty.

  KIRWIN B: Alexander thinks that not going skiing constitutes poverty.

  Ede asks the Kirwins about performance-enhancing drugs. Do they ever take them?

  Vehement denials.

  EDE: Oh, of course you do. All athletes do. They’re supposed to shrink your cocks, performance-enhancing drugs, aren’t they? Cock-shrinkage: has that happened to you? Come on, you can tell us.

  The Kirwins storm off.

  Laughter.

  He was just asking, Ede says.

  ME (looking ahead): What is Wittgenstein thinking about?

  EDE: Death, I should imagine. Our shortcomings. His own shortcomings. His sense of sin.

  We run to catch up with him.

  Indian summer.

  Ede and I, walking in the open fields by Grange Road.

  If only we had something to talk about, like the scholars of yore! Something serious. Something weighty, on which to take sides! We would walk and talk, and talk and walk. We would outline our positions, and refine our ideas …

  We would speak of topic A, as we walk, stroking our chins, and topic B, shaking our heads. We would ponder issue C with great sternness, and toss restless ideas back and forth about issue D. Patiently, carefully, we would consider the likely repercussions of thesis E, and ask whether the consequences of issue F have really been thought through. Is hypothesis G worthy of consideration?, we’d wonder. And what about conjecture H? We would shake our heads about nostrum I, and laugh about the preposterousness of fallacy J—how could anyone take J seriously! K is a heresy, we would agree, pursing our lips. As for L—there’s something to be said about L, we would agree, nodding our heads …

  What is it we lack as intellectuals?, we wonder. Ideas? Real intelligence? Is it a question of temperament? Of intensity? Is it a matter of being European—old European—or at least foreign?

  You can’t teach love—that’s what Wittgenstein said yesterday. That’s the condition of philosophy: fierce and fiery love. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, he said. A love for what you do not possess. A love for what, nevertheless, has left its trace in you.

  Wittgenstein is a lover—that’s what we learnt yesterday. A lover’s heart beats beneath that dour exterior …

  Do we have love—real love—for philosophy?, Ede and I wonder. Are we capable of that love?

  We have the sense of living for something larger than us, better than us. The sense of something worthwhile, that we can serve. We have the sense of something difficult, to which we can dedicate ourselves. The sense of being part of something, involved in something …

  The sky clouding over. The sun slanting in.

  We walk, thinking of the many times Wittgenstein has been seen walking in Cambridge, and confiding our desire to share in Wittgenstein’s walks. To become, if not fellow thinkers, then at least fellow walkers, companions in thought.

  To walk behind him, wondering about the effect on his thinking of the sun warming his head. Wondering about the effect of heavy rain or thick fog. Wondering about the effect of the crunch of snow underfoot. Wondering if it makes any difference to his thought whether he keeps the river on his left, or on his right. Musing upon the influence of topography on his thought. Of elevation, or depression. Pondering the difference between thinking on the valley bottom and on the hillcrest …

  But better still would be to walk with him, we agree. To listen to his concerns as we walk together. To walk quietly and listen. To appear to take in his ideas, without understanding a word. To murmur noncommittally as he speaks. To nod our heads mutely, and at the right time. To agree, when we sense he wants agreement, and to disagree, when he seems to want disagreement.

  To pause when he takes mind to pause. To stand quietly as he works out a problem. And to start walking with him as he starts walking again, as his thoughts become unstuck again …

  To take morning walks with Wittgenstein! Full of vigour and energy! Full of hope! Full of the promise of the work he will do that day! To take dawn walks, the world dew-wet with promise. Edenic walks, as Adam took with Eve just after the Creation. Walks in which he would feel his philosophical powers gathering … Walks in which he would draw the air to the bottom of his lungs … Walks in which he would nod his head to other early-risers, other kings and queens of the morning …

  To take afternoon walks with Wittgenstein! Long and languorous walks. Wandering walks, walks without plan, on which he would muse upon the most intractable issues. Walks with the indefinite as their horizon. Walks as wide as the world, as open …

  To take nighttime walks with Wittgenstein! After hours, when anything can be said. Walks of confidences, when he might talk hush-voiced of his dreams and desires. When he might whisper to us of secret hopes and fervours. Of his thought-ambitions. Of his Logik.

  To take walks after midnight with Wittgenstein! Walks of th
e early hours. To take the insomniac’s walk, the too-awake walk. To take the over-conscious walk that would tire him out. How would we help him to find his way to sleep, walking among the last of the revellers and the puddles of vomit?

  Wittgenstein, turning to us in desperation. In vulnerability. Wittgenstein saying: Help me! Help me to think!

  Sounds of machine-gun fire. Booms. Shouting. The lecturer in the next room must be showing a film.

  Wittgenstein winces.

  His silence, our silence. His, a silence of inner struggle. Of armies of thought clashing inside him. Of Jacob wrestling the angel. Ours, a silence of expectancy, giving way to distraction.

  A fly on the windowpane. Isn’t it too cold for flies …?

  The playing fields, touched with frost. Football noises come through the fog.

  A thought must arrive all at once, or not at all, he says.

  Spontaneity: that is his aim. To think spontaneously, as by a kind of reflex.

  We must retrain our thought-instincts, he says. We must rehone our most basic thought-responses.

  Classroom décor. Faded posters. Old bound editions of learned journals in locked cabinets, roman numerals on the spines. Who reads them? What have they to do with anyone? How long have they been here? Did people ever read them? Did anyone ever care about such things?

  The journals make us uneasy. They are not of us, not accessible to us. They’re not for us, yet they surround us. Isn’t Cambridge supposed to be our playground? Isn’t Cambridge supposed to centre on us?

  Cambridge should be about us—here—in the present. Cambridge should come to us, who live in the present …

  The fire alarm. We remain at our desks. Is it a drill? Will it stop? Will silence return? The alarm is persistent. A fire warden bangs on the door. We have to vacate the building.

  Outside. Low, dark cloud. We stand about in the drizzle, among all the other students. Mulberry, with his FUCK TOMORROW T-shirt. Titmuss, with his new nose ring.

  We look at our feet, Wittgenstein looks at the sky. Minutes pass. Everyone around us starts to file back inside.

  He can’t go in again, Wittgenstein says. We’ll have to walk, all of us. We’ll have to revive the peripatetic school.

  The Great Bridge. Magdalene College. The River Cam, muddy and narrow.

  How sick he is of Cambridge!, he says. How tired he is!

  This foul, damp city, he says. This rotten place. This marsh stagnancy, full of fogs and vapours. This place of lowness. This place of contagion. He’s suffocating, he says.

  Imagine it!, he says: a whole town built below sea level (more or less). Waiting for the sea to close over it. Waiting to drown, with just the spires of King’s College Chapel poking up above the water.

  We walk quietly beside him, wary of his mood.

  A don, walking his dog, greets Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein nods back.

  The dog is a disgusting creature, Wittgenstein says when the don is out of earshot. Bred for dependency. Bred for slobbering. We think our dogs love us because we have a debased idea of love, he says. We think our dogs are loyal to us because we have a corrupted sense of loyalty.

  People object to pit bulls and Rottweilers, but pit bulls and Rottweilers are his favourite dogs, Wittgenstein says. They don’t hide what they are.

  People love Labradors, of course. But the Labrador is the most disgusting of dogs, he says, because of its apparent gentleness.

  The kindness of the Labrador: disgusting. The pleasantness of the Labrador: disgusting. The even-temperedness of the Labrador: disgusting. The tractability of the Labrador: disgusting. The easygoingness of the Labrador: likewise disgusting. The affability of the Labrador: altogether disgusting. The good-naturedness of the Labrador: filth! Pure filth! The outgoingness of the Labrador: horrific. The sociability of the Labrador: despicable. The kindly eyes of the Labrador: wholly disgusting …

  The Cambridge dons’ thoughts are like their dogs, he says. Their thoughts are like thoughts on a leash … Thoughts trained to play catch … Thoughts sniffing the rear ends of other thoughts … Thoughts with a collar round their necks. Thoughts whose mess you have to clean up.

  The Cambridge mistake is to believe that thought simply comes when you whistle, he says. But thought must whistle to us! Thought should not be tame! Thought should tear out our throats!

  Wittgenstein speaks of dangerous thoughts, of thoughts which bite. He speaks of wild thoughts which snarl and sting. Of thoughts which have to be tamed and broken.

  There are thoughts you have to avoid if they appear, he says. Shy thoughts, wary thoughts, thoughts that only cross your mind when all is calm and still, like deer passing through a woodland glade at dawn.

  And there are thoughts that have to be flushed out, he says. Driven in herds. Thoughts that need baiting—thoughts that can be caught only by means of decoys, of lures, of hidden traps. Thoughts for which you have to lie in wait.

  And there are thoughts you have to run down, he says—thoughts you have to chase through days and nights. Thoughts which run you down. Thoughts which turn you into the quarry, thoughts which charge you, thoughts which beat you from your hiding place.

  And there are thoughts which are cleverer than you are, he says. Wiser than you are. Thoughts which are better than you are, loftier and more noble. High thoughts, thoughts that stream above you …

  And there are thoughts of the stratosphere, he says. Of the ionosphere! Thoughts that skim along the edge of space, and that you have to bring down to earth. Thoughts of the depths—subterranean thoughts, which sing through fundaments and profundities. Reverberant thoughts, like buried earthquakes. Thoughts no longer of the hard crust, but of the blazing mantle. Thoughts of the earth’s core, deep down where lava turns in lava.

  Those are the kinds of thoughts he came to Cambridge to think, Wittgenstein says. Those are the thoughts only the atrocious conditions of Cambridge might impel him to think.

  He didn’t come to Cambridge to sit at the feet of Collison-Bell, the modal logician, he says. Nor of Hawley, the modal realist. It wasn’t the epistemological work of Pritchett that drew him here, nor the meta-epistemology of McPherson. He didn’t come to study with Oliphant, the famous metaphysician, nor to pursue the meta-philosophy of ‘Mutt’ McDonald. It was not to attend the lectures of Price-Young on Infallibalism, nor of Safranski on Indefeasibility, nor of Subramanian on Externalism, nor of Han on Internalism. It wasn’t to ally himself with the research group on Quantum Cognition, nor to become part of the Computational Neuroscience Network. He had no intention whatsoever of advancing Cambridgean thought in the areas of malleable intelligence, nor of dynacism.

  He came to Cambridge to be close to the thieves, he says. 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 strapping on his belt. Because he came to Cambridge to rout the thieves.

  (EDE (whispering): Isn’t Wittgenstein, technically, a don?

  ME (whispering): But not spiritually. And that’s the point.)

  Little St Mary’s Church, damp and quiet. Bottled-up air. The smell of wet plaster.

  It’s really only the fragment of a church, you can see that, Wittgenstein says. It was meant to be part of something larger.

  He admires the flintwork of the tower. Cambridgeshire flint, he says, the only stone round here. He admires the windows, and the daggers and mouchettes in the tracery. So similar to Ely Cathedral, he says. So unlike other East Anglian churches …

  A long pause. The rest of us stand about awkwardly. Wittgenstein smiles. The problem is, none of us really knows what to do in a church, he says.

  We know we have to be quiet, he says. We know we mustn’t disturb the church. Even Benwell knows that he shouldn’t make a racket in the calm. But that’s all that remains of the old reverence for the place where heaven and earth were supposed to meet.

  WITTGENSTEIN (inspe
cting the chantry chapels): Christianity declares us to be wretched: that’s its greatness. Christianity knows us as sinners. (A pause.) I suppose you are all atheists.

  Titmuss begins to speak of religion in India. No one listens.

  MULBERRY: Do you believe in God?

  WITTGENSTEIN: I do not. Not, at least, in the sense you think I might.

  MULBERRY: Surely you either believe in God or you don’t.

  WITTGENSTEIN: Perhaps it is not a question of belief. Perhaps the concept of God is not the kind of thing in which one can believe or disbelieve.

  DOYLE: You mean religion is a cultural thing? That it’s all about belonging to a tradition?

  Silence.

  WITTGENSTEIN: A despairing man cries, O God, and rolls his eyes up to heaven. It is on that basis we should understand both the words God and heaven. A despairing man cries, I am damned, and falls, weeping, to the ground. It is on that basis we should understand both the words damnation and Hell.

  The concept of God is used to express an extremity of wretchedness, suffering, and doubt, he says. Really, religion is only for the wretched. That’s why we, who know nothing of wretchedness, know nothing of religion. And that’s why we, who never feel ourselves to be wretched, know nothing of philosophy, either.

  A painting of St Michael, weighing souls in his scales. Of St Christopher, crossing a great river with the infant Christ on his shoulder.

  Titmuss’s phone goes off (who else would have a Govinda Jaya Jaya ringtone?). He fumbles through his pockets.

  Come, let’s go, Wittgenstein says. We shouldn’t wake the church. The church is dreaming. The church is falling through the centuries. The church doesn’t want to be woken up. It doesn’t want us here.

  Trumpington Street. A sudden shower. Rain, falling heavily. We shelter in the museum porch, watching the water splash from the gutters.

  TITMUSS: It’s like an Indian monsoon. The weather’s gone weird.

  EDE: The world’s ending.

  MULBERRY: And Cambridge will be the first to go under. Cambridge and Cambridgeshire and East Anglia … The North Sea will reclaim it all.