and other remarks on Wittgenstein
I wondered
whether I could make again a special end of the year blog, for example about what
philosophers do during the turn of the year. However, it appeared difficult to
find such information. I found only what Wittgenstein had written about it in a
diary that I have here at home. During the First World War (1914-1918)
Wittgenstein volunteered in the Austrian-Hungarian army and then he kept two
diaries: a personal diary and a philosophical diary. The first one begins on 9
August 1914 and ends on 19 August 1918. The philosophical diary begins on 22
August 1914 and ends on 10 January 1917. The philosophical diary became the
foundation of his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein
didn’t write each day in his diaries and moreover several parts of his personal
diary have been lost.
When Wittgenstein
was in the army, first he had several functions behind the frontline. Later he
got – on his request – frontline tasks. He was taken prisoner by the Italian
army in 1918. Since the personal diary is not complete, we know only what Wittgenstein
did on the last day of 1914 and the first day of 1915 and not on the other New
Year’s Eves and Days in this period. He was then somewhere in Poland where he
had a quiet job and much time to philosophize. On 30 December he wrote: “Didn’t
work. Only take care not to get lost”. Next on 2 January he writes that the day
before he suddenly had heard that he would go to Vienna with his commander
(where he would then visit his family). In his philosophical diary Wittgenstein
wrote nothing for almost two weeks during this time. So although Wittgenstein
had apparently much time to philosophize at the end of 1914, for me there is
nothing to philosophize about what he did. The only interesting thing to remark
here is that when writing “not worked” Wittgenstein didn’t mean that he had
nothing to do in his job as a soldier, but that he hadn’t worked on what would
later become his Tractatus.
Dissatisfied
with this result, I browsed a little bit in Wittgenstein’s philosophical diary.
My eye was caught by this sentence: “Empirical reality is limited by the number
of objects”, which he wrote down on 26 April 1916. But how do you count the number
of objects? For what an object is, is in some sense arbitrary. Is it for this
reason that in his Tractatus Wittgenstein changed it to “Empirical
reality is limited by the totality of objects”? (5.5561). But it doesn’t really
solve the problem of countability. Still thinking about this statement, I saw a
few lines down another striking statement in the philosophical diary, which
Wittgenstein wrote on 6 May 1916: “At the basis of the whole view of the world
of the moderns lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the
explanations of natural phenomena.” You find this sentence almost literally in
the Tractatus, namely in 6.371. At first sight it seems quite obscure,
but a few sentences later, Wittgenstein explains:
“6.373 The
world is independent of my will.
6.374 Even if everything we wished were to
happen, this would only be, so to speak, a favour of fate, for there is no logical
connexion between will and world, which would guarantee this, and the assumed
physical connexion itself we could not again will.”
How relevant
this is in view of the present situation in which the coronavirus rules the
world! For what Wittgenstein maintains in these almost religious statements is:
What happens in the world is completely independent of what we think of it and
what we would like to happen. Whatever we think about natural phenomena and the
way they come about, they just happen, despite our will or opinion. And if
things happen the way we like, it’s mere chance. Translated to the present pandemic
this means: Whatever the origin of the coronavirus is, as a natural phenomenon
it follows its own way. Even if it would have a human origin, so even
if it would have been made and spread by man on purpose (which I don’t
believe), as a natural phenomenon it follows its own way by its own logics. But
then we have no other choice, than to adapt ourselves and to follow the logics
of nature in order to fight the virus. From that point of view keeping
distance, lockdowns and vaccination are reasonable measures for they are based
on the natural character of the phenomenon.
However, Wittgenstein
didn’t say so. It’s my interpretation. His Tractatus and his later works,
published or not published by himself, are abstract works. Nevertheless Wittgenstein
wasn’t an ivory-tower thinker. During the First World War he was a soldier by choice;
during the Second World War he was a nurse in an English hospital. In this
period he also saved the capital of his family from the Nazis, although long
before that date he had given away his part.
Be it as it
may, my present reflections haven’t helped to answer the main question of this
blog: How do famous philosophers meet New Year? Therefore, I want to end with
another quote from the Tractatus, namely its last sentence:
7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one
must be silent.
Happy New Year!
Sources
- Baum, Wilhelm, Wittgenstein
im Ersten Weltkrieg. Die “Geheimen Tagebücher“ und die Erfahrungen an der Front
1914-1918). Klagenfurt-Wien: Kitab Verlag 2014.
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf
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