Wittgenstein Jr

by Lars Iyer

  Carefully numbered points, an architectonic structure for his logical project, gave way to scraps, fragments. To shifting sands. Meticulous proofs, scrupulous formulae, gave way to remarks about his project. About the impossibility of his project. About the impossibility of logic. About the impossibility of philosophy.

  There were times when he deliberately neglected his brother’s notebooks, Wittgenstein says. Their demand was too great. Their challenge, too frightening. He rested mugs of coffee on their covers. He left them at the bottom of his rucksack, squashed by supermarket groceries, pastry grease staining their pages.

  There were times when he wanted to off-load his brother’s notebooks, Wittgenstein says. To have done with his responsibilities. He thought of placing them in a Jiffy bag and posting them anonymously to the Bodleian. He thought of leaving them on the doorstep of the British Library. He thought of sending the notebooks to the Oxford philosophy department. To Cambridge lecturers in logic. But who would understand them?

  Only one who has had exactly the same thoughts that I have had can understand me, his brother wrote in his first notebook. Only one who has suffered thought, who has suffered his way to thought. Only one, like me, who went to logic on his hands and knees.

  I have come to Norway to suffer for logic, and perhaps die for logic, or at the very least go mad for logic, his brother wrote in his second notebook. Logic will no doubt send me mad. But it will be a sublime madness. A sane madness.

  Clarity or death. No—clarity is death, his brother wrote in his third notebook. I am dead. I am no longer human. Only the dead can read these pages.

  News! Professor Warrington-Smythe, head of philosophy at Oxford, is coming to give a paper. Will Wittgenstein attend, we wonder, to face down the famous philosopher?

  The ancient debating chamber, on the main campus. Warrington-Smythe, with a group of Oxford students. And the big guns of Cambridge: Professor Crookshank, Ellison Chair in Logic, with a band of his students. Professor Knowles, McCarthy Chair in Political Philosophy, with a band of his students … Are all of the Cambridge philosophers here?

  Bell, in sandals, whispering in James’s ear. Powell, all tweed, giggling with Harding. Raynor-Scobey, eyes closed as she listens. Twelvetrees, furiously taking notes. Clutterbuck, folding an origami swan. Turner-Whitford, his chair tilted back, feet resting on the desk in front of him. Scotswood, clicking his pen, looking fierce, ready for battle …

  Wittgenstein, unobtrusive in his beltless mackintosh, seated by a window at the back of the room. What has brought him here, we wonder, he who loathes all Cambridge philosophy, and, we suppose, all Oxford philosophy? Why has he come, who doesn’t believe in Oxbridge philosophy?

  Warrington-Smythe blows his nose and coughs loudly. His students also cough, and also blow their noses. Crookshank rubs his bald head back and forth with both hands. Crookshank’s students rub their thick hair back and forth with both hands, making a curiously leonine effect. Knowles surreptitiously fingers his nostrils. Knowles’s students surreptitiously finger their nostrils.

  Wittgenstein, meanwhile, looks out of the window. And we, too, look out of the window.

  Afterwards, Ede’s rooms.

  EDE: That was unbearable. Warrington-Smythe was awful!

  DOYLE: Crookshank was just as bad. Actually, Crookshank was worse!

  MULBERRY: Did you hear bloody Knowles? He does go on.

  DOYLE: Who do you think won, Oxford or Cambridge?

  MULBERRY: They were both bloody awful.

  But what of Wittgenstein’s silence?, we wonder. Was it a form of instruction? Ought we somehow to learn from it?

  Perhaps Wittgenstein’s just sad, I speculate. Perhaps he’s simply lost in despair.

  Doyle remembers Wittgenstein’s face as cracked in woe. But Mulberry says Wittgenstein’s face was expressionless. It betrayed nothing.

  His silence was like a black hole, we agree. A void in the conference. As though he sucked the occasion into himself, making it nothing. We were uneasy. What did Wittgenstein want of us, in the aftermath of Oxbridge philosophy?

  We fantasise that Wittgenstein had wiped the floor with Crookshank and his Oxford contingent. That he had raised his hand at the end of Crookshank’s paper. With respect …, he had begun, obviously meaning the complete opposite. I would like to make a few modest remarks …, he had continued, all but pulling on a knuckleduster.

  That Wittgenstein had blinded everyone! Left them dazzled. That Oxford had been ashamed, that Cambridge had been ashamed. That Oxbridge had been shown to itself in all its corruption. That Oxbridge philosophy had learnt its lesson.

  That all had known a giant sat amongst them. That the very presence of Wittgenstein had been a living reproach. That Wittgenstein had humbled Oxford, and brought Cambridge to its knees.

  That it hadn’t been about point scoring—about petty academic politics. That it had been about the essential nobility of thought … the pure spirit of inquiry … of philosophy! About Wittgenstein’s essential incorruptibility …

  That the whole of Oxbridge had marvelled. That all there had wondered at us, Wittgenstein’s pupils. That we had shone with some of Wittgenstein’s majesty.

  But Wittgenstein has told us many times that philosophy has nothing at all to do with discussion; that philosophy eschews debate; that one should do philosophy, and not talk philosophy.

  Wittgenstein headed up his stairwell, alone and quite silent, only nodding at us to take his leave. We heard the sound of his brogues on the flagstones. He seemed weary. His steps slowed. Had he reached the top of the staircase? Was he unlocking the door of his rooms?

  What might he have done?, we wonder. Might he have stood, at some point, and said some splendid, gnomic thing, something no one had understood, not even us? Some splendid, gnomic thing that had stunned everyone, that had given them pause, that had halted the whole charade, if only for a moment. Some splendid thing, impenetrable, gnomic, at once absolutely relevant and absolutely baffling.

  Might he have left, pulling on his mackintosh? And might we have followed, Wittgenstein’s men, glamour and mystery trailing after us, myth and legend already beginning to accrete around us?

  Might the legend of Wittgenstein have really begun? The legend of Wittgenstein and his men. Of a new thought-prince, and a new thought-school. Of a new step in philosophy, a strange step, a knight’s move, to leap over the heads of current thinkers. A new zigzag, a bolt of thought striking down, leaving nothing intact. Might Wittgenstein have left the ancient hall, mackintosh billowing? Might we have left with him, mackintoshes billowing?

  We’d hoped for more, we admit. Not just from Wittgenstein, but from everyone. We’d hoped for better things of academic debate.

  We’d imagined battles of logic, played out on parallel whiteboards, formulae flying from logician’s fingers.

  We’d imagined the to-and-fro of medieval disputations. Like chess games. Like speed chess, the moves coming faster and faster. Until the loser gasped for air, exhausted, and the winner sat back in triumph.

  We’d imagined rival casuists, rival applied ethicists, at war over the interpretation of particular cases. (The plank of Carneades. Foot’s trolley problem. Parfitt’s mere addition paradox.)

  We’d imagined philosopher-exegetes, competing to give the best gloss of Gödel’s Formally Undecidable Propositions. Of Tarski’s Concept of Truth. Of Łukasiewicz’s Elements of Mathematical Logic.

  We’d dreamt of old thinkers, charging around the philosophical landscape like tyrannosaurs, before being brought down by the fiendish cunning of a pack of young velociraptors. We’d dreamt of old thought-warriors crashing to the ground, the referee counting slowly to ten.

  We’d imagined tag teams of Cambridge thinkers: the metaphysician teamed with the philosopher of mind; the logician teamed with the Kant-specialist …

  We’d imagined thought-wars: quietists against stridentists, cognitivists against non-cognitivists, moral particularists against moral absolutists, physicali
sts against dualists …

  We’d imagined secret thought-battles, for philosophers only, clandestine after-conferences like the after-show catwalk battles in Zoolander …

  Yes, we had hoped for more, we agree.

  He knows what philosophy is, Wittgenstein says. He has seen the face of philosophy. He has seen the face of logic.

  The look of torment on his brother’s face. The look of calamity on his brother’s face. The look of despair on his brother’s face. He has seen these things.

  The look of relief on his brother’s face, when they cut down his body. The look of peace on his brother’s face, when they closed his eyes. Of achieved peace, as at the end of a late Beethoven quartet. Yes, he has seen these things, he says.

  Philosophy invaded his brother, Wittgenstein says. It saw a chink, a weakness, and flooded in.

  There never was any such thing as logic, his brother wrote in his first notebook. The whole of the history of logic is only an episode in the history of the impossibility of logic.

  There never was any such thing as philosophy, his brother wrote in his second notebook. The history of philosophy is only a chapter in the greater history of madness.

  Logic is mad, his brother wrote in his third and final notebook. All reason is mad. Thought has gone mad, lost in its corridors. Thought has sent itself mad, thinking about itself in its labyrinth.

  His brother wrote of thoughts of infinite recursion, of mirrored mirrors. He wrote of thoughts of the abyss that are themselves an abyss. He wrote of thoughts of darkness that are themselves dark. He wrote of thoughts of the end that never reach the end.

  There is another, thinking inside me, his brother wrote in his final notebook. There is another, unthinking my thoughts. Unliving my life. Another, dying my life and living my death …

  Philosophy: the name for the disaster of thought, his brother wrote in his final notebook. Philosopher: the name for the other, who thinks inside me.

  Then it came to him, Wittgenstein says: his task, the task he would take on for his brother’s sake, and in his brother’s memory. He would construct a kind of logical mausoleum for his brother. What is his Logik but a logical tomb for his brother? And the logical resurrection of his brother?

  He means to enter the region in which his brother lost his mind, and to come back out, Wittgenstein says.

  A first snowfall. Winter already!

  Ede and I, on the way to class, contemplating the transitoriness of life.

  How much time do we have left? How many days until the end of term? Until the end of the academic year? We long for it all to be over. We dread that it will all be over.

  A burning desire to bunk off. To hit the road in Ede’s coupé.

  How open our lives are, just as Wittgenstein says! Anything might happen! We are lost. Lost in the middle of life. We feel vulnerable—alone and exposed, falling deeper and deeper into Time.

  We may have sniffed too much amyl nitrate last night, Ede says. He thought his head would burst. And there were too many Black Zombies …

  But it’s more than that, we agree. We’ve begun to think about our lives. To think about our thoughts! To ask ourselves who we are, and what made us who we are. And our questions resound inside us: Why is there anything at all? Why is there life? Why death? Whose gift was all this? Whose mistake was it all? Whose boon? Whose oversight? By what law of necessity did it occur? By what blind chance? What’s it all for? Why should it be for anything?

  Wittgenstein would approve, Ede says. We’re acquiring depth …

  • • •

  Chakrabarti, walking ahead of us, babbling to Wittgenstein. Of all people! For fuck’s sake!

  Chakrabarti wears a padded coat, all the way down to his feet, like a duvet … And his grin. His goonish grin …

  What’s Chakrabarti doing in Cambridge anyway? What’s he doing in our class? Why’s he always padding after us like the fat kid in Hollywood movies? Why, when he has no chance whatsoever of understanding Wittgenstein?

  Chakrabarti is out of his depth, we agree. Chakrabarti should have kept to the shallows, splashing about. Chakrabarti should have stayed on the beach, playing with his sand castles.

  Chakrabarti signed up for the Cambridge experience—that we’re sure of. Chakrabarti, in the Cambridge sweatshirt, now and forever a Cambridge man.

  Chakrabarti lacks any sense of irony … Chakrabarti is without depth, which surprises us—India is the country of spiritual depth! What happened, we wonder? What went so wrong over there, that India could produce a Chakrabarti?

  Chakrabarti, grinning back at us. How inane he is! But we have to admit that Chakrabarti makes us feel clever, simply by comparison. Part of an elite. He makes us feel closer to Wittgenstein, in some way. Akin to him.

  Growing pressure, growing urgency—Wittgenstein appears to believe that everything will soon fall into place.

  He speaks quickly, intimately, presuming we can follow him.

  Fewer pauses to think; fewer moments of silence. A pellmell of logical symbols, of logical operators, of unfamiliar words. The blackboard on the mantle shelf written over and wiped clean.

  Philosophy is simmering. Logic is being brought to the boil. Thought itself will soon be running over …

  The last step is the hardest step, he says. The last step is the most dangerous. The last step requires the greatest courage. It is the step that changes the one who steps.

  The end is not like the beginning, he says. The last hours are nothing like the first. Tomorrow is not another day.

  He is carrying us with him, he says. Carrying us over the edge of thought’s waterfall. We will tumble into thought’s plunge pool together.

  He means to whip up a logical storm, Wittgenstein says. A logical frenzy. He means to shake the snow globe of logic. He means to send it mad. And he means to welcome madness when it comes. He means to let it destroy him. He means to let it destroy the world—what he knows as the world.

  The resurrection of thought. That’s what he means to find. The resurrection of the world.

  He means to drown everything in the baptismal bath of his Logik, Wittgenstein says. He will baptise everything anew—when the Logik is revealed, we, too, will be revealed. We will know who we are. No: we will be who we are. At the end, the very end, we will put on the Logik, Wittgenstein says. We will wear the Logik as an armour of light …

  A walk on the Backs.

  The don-watch, that’s what he calls his late-night vigils, Wittgenstein says. When he can’t sleep, he sits by the window, he says, and peers out into the gloom. There are dons out there, he tells himself. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them! There are dons in the gloom, near and far. Flocks of dons! Shoals of dons! Where one banks, the others bank. Where one careens, the others careen. Sometimes, they all fly up at once—a comet, a maelstrom, a boiling mass—and their wings hide the skies …

  Yes, there is a real splendour to dons en regalia, he says. A real beauty to dons in their full plumage. The dons, with their chests puffed out … The dons, with their erect carriage … The dons, in their hierarchies, which are intelligible to no one … The dons, carrying out their ceremonial duties, which not even they understand …

  The dons have a kind of pack intelligence, he says. A hive intelligence; they think in unison. Sometimes, he’s even suspected that the dons are telepathically connected, so similar do they seem to him in manner and in thought.

  The dons are always ready to pounce, he says. Always ready with their greetings. Hello, they say. Nice weather we’re having, they say. How are you?, they say. How are you getting on?, they say. What have you been up to?, they say. Each time: an assault. Each time: a truncheon over the head. Hello. Nice day. Hello. Hello.

  And the philosopher-dons are worst of all!, he cries.

  The dons of ethics—the least virtuous of all. The dons of logic—the least reasonable of all. The dons of epistemology—the least knowledgeable of all. The dons of metaphysics—the least profound of all. The dons of aesthetic
s—the least cultured of all …

  The dons of philosophy: academic-output manufacturers! Impact-seekers! Grant-chasers! Citation-trufflers! Self-googlers! Web-profile updaters! Facebook posters! Tweedy voids!

  Do the dons know about his Logik?, he wonders. Have any of us told them?

  No, we assure him. None of us has told them.

  Do the dons know about him, about what he is teaching?

  No, we tell him. We have kept our mouths shut.

  What would the dons do if they knew?, he whispers.

  The Logik will solve all the fundamental problems of philosophy, he says.

  The Logik will soar above the philosophical storms. It will catch fire by itself. It will burn with its own flame, like a star.

  The Logik will know everything, he says. It will have seen everything in advance. The Logik will be lucidity itself. Daylight itself.

  The Logik will bring peace, he says. Logical peace.

  Snow scenes, as in Brueghel. Students making snowmen. Students throwing snowballs at one another.

  Benwell, in the thick of it, throwing snowballs packed with stones.

  Ede and I, at a safe distance.

  Why does Benwell scowl so?, we wonder. And what’s it like to be in a bad temper day and night?

  Benwell would throw his stone-balls at us, if we were in range. Benwell would curse and cry and spit at us …

  In the old days, Benwell would have been a communist, or something, we agree. He’d have been selling socialist papers in the rain, or getting you to sign a petition. He’d have been manning the Free Palestine stand. Even a few years ago, he’d have been among the occupiers in the Old Buildings, shuffling around in dirty pyjamas …