i) Introduction
ii) Wittgenstein and
Heidegger's Parallel Mystical Lives
iii) Unthought
and the Point of Pointlessness
iv) The
Prose and Philosophy of Wittgenstein
v) How
to Get Unthought Wrong
vi) How
to Miss the Point of Pointlessness
vii) Heidegger
and Wittgenstein as Non-Philosophers
Introduction
“Not
that I believe that [the Tractatus]…is
to any extent ‘mystical’…I shall try to prove that this is not
the case…what Wittgenstein says about ‘the mystical’ depends
heavily on what he says about facts, objects, logic and language;
that any interpretation which brings in ‘mystical’, alien
doctrines and concepts…totally misses the mark.” (Eddy
Zemach,
in his 'Wittgenstein's
Philosophy of the Mystical',
1964)
The
following is a piece on the mystical and spiritual leanings of Martin
Heidegger
(1889 -1976) and Ludwig
Wittgenstein
(1889 -1951); as well as on the comparisons that can be made between
the two philosophers.
As
far as Wittgenstein is concerned, there will be virtually no mention
of his early period. However, the Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus
will be a brooding presence in the background and will evidently, at
times, break through. In any case, the mystical
side of
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
has already been well-commented upon. Despite saying that, it's still
worth remembering that, at a certain point in history, the many
connections that can be made between, for example, the mystical sides
of Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein had to be forced down the throats of
Wittgenstein’s incredulous - though faithful – positivist and
analytic acolytes. To many of them (at that time) the ideas that
could be found in the history of German metaphysics were almost all
strictly verboten.
So
I myself will
quote a very Tractatus-like
passage
here from Arthur
Schopenhauer
that isn't only relevant to a reading of the Tractatus
itself; though also to a reading of late Wittgenstein:
“What
is supposed to be communicated by [this book] is a single
thought…[which] viewed from different sides, shows itself as what
people have called metaphysics, what they have called ethics, and
what they have called aesthetics…” (1816)
Instead
of a detailed commentary on the Tractatus,
I'll argue that the mystical (or spiritual) side of Wittgenstein’s
work was, in certain senses, carried on until his death. I don't
believe, therefore, that there's any deep chasm between the early and
late Wittgenstein.
As
far as Heidegger is concerned, I came to find that what can be called
my very
English reading
of the
German philosopher was very much like Richard
Rorty’s
very
American reading
of him. What appeals to me about Rorty's position on Heidegger - and
indeed continental philosophy generally - was his ability to
“demystify” the obsession with
deepness
(or, as the English would say, heaviness);
as well as with Life and Death. What Rorty argues is that under the
“onto-theological”
expressions of these issues (at least as far as Heidegger is
concerned) lies some quite simple elements which are (in some cases
at least) not particularly deep or profound at all.
For
example, take
this
de-mystificatory (or, simply, non-pretentious) interpretation of
Heidegger’s notion of Dasein
from
Rorty:
“I
take ‘Being’ to be, in Heidegger…merely ‘transcendental
German’ for a ‘connection of man with the enveloping world’,
which naturalism…does not help us envisage.” (1983)
There
are many other connections between Wittgenstein and Heidegger that
could have been commented upon in this piece. They include:
i)
Their shared concern with language.
ii)
Their philosophical externalism
and anti-individualism
(as a response to – Cartesian - internalism
and subjectivism).
iii)
Their interest in what Robert
Brandom
called the “ontological
primacy of the social”
.
iv)
Their sceptical position on scepticism itself (which is itself a
correlative position with the externalism just mentioned).
v)
Heideggerian arguments that are somewhat close to Wittgenstein's
Private
Language Argument.
Primarily,
I believe that both Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s mystical and
spiritual leanings can primarily be found in the following ways:
i)
Their desire to reach a state of what I call unthought
(or, alternatively, thoughtlessness).
ii)
Their anti-academia and anti-philosophy.
iii)
Their strong anti-scientific (or anti-scientistic,
in Wittgenstein’s case) proclivities.
iv)
Their metaphilosophical attempts to either “overcome” the Western
philosophical tradition (Heidegger) or to simply ignore it
(Wittgenstein).
v)
Their defence of religious (as well as other) language games.
What
follows is not primarily a work of philosophical analysis (if at
all). In fact analytic philosophers (of the hard-core type) may find
this essay to be one long ad
hominem.
I would say, however, that this piece is indeed biographical (to some
extent at least). Having conceded that, I will still say that ad
hominem
arguments (if, indeed, the following are such things) are justified
if they (arguably) lead the way to a better and deeper understanding
of the philosophical arguments.
That is, biographical detail isn't seen as an end
of this philosophical inquiry: simply the beginning.
And this particular inquiry into Heidegger and Wittgenstein is still
ongoing.
Biographical
Sketches
The
following section is by way of two very short biographical sketches
of both Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s spiritual and religious
lives. Although, again, it's evidently not a piece of philosophical
analysis,
hopefully it will put the following sections of this essay in some
kind of context.
Ludwig
Wittgenstein
“Bach
wrote on the title page of his Orgelbuchlein,
'To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be
benefited thereby.' That is what I would have liked to say about my
work.” (Wittgenstein)
Wittgenstein’s
father was baptised a Protestant. His mother and her children were
Catholics. (Wittgenstein was Jewish “by
blood”.)
Wittgenstein
only achieved an A
twice in his entire school career. Perhaps it won't be surprising to
be told that he scored As
both times in religious studies. A decade or so later, a writer
friend of Wittgenstein said that the philosopher would have most have
liked to have become a priest and “to
have read the Bible with the children”.
Shortly after this, Wittgenstein began a short career as a
schoolteacher. At his school he would pray with his pupils every day.
After leaving that post, Wittgenstein called in at a monastery and
enquired about becoming a monk. (Needless to say, he didn't take up
this vocation.) However, Wittgenstein’s Christian beliefs remained
strong after this event. So much so that in the 1920s Bertrand
Russell said
of Wittgenstein:
“[He] was much pained by the fact of my not being a Christian.”
Martin
Heidegger
Heidegger
was brought up in a strict conservative Catholic family. Early on in
his life he wanted to join the Catholic priesthood. However, in 1919,
Heidegger broke with the Catholic confession.
Despite that, Heidegger still described himself as a “Christian
theologian”
until around 1921.
Now
let’s quickly skip forward to Heidegger’s funeral. He was buried
in a Christian Church at which a Mass of Christian burial was held.
It was the same church at which Heidegger’s father had once served
as a sexton. The celebrant on this occasion was a Christian
theologian. Heidegger had previously asked him to read verses from
the poet Hölderlin,
and these verses were to be read alongside sections from the
Scriptures. The celebrant theologian also spoke on Heidegger’s
behalf. He said that Heidegger was a great philosopher and a “seeker
whose thought has shaken our century”.
Unthought
and the Point of Pointlessness
“…it
is not philosophy in any straightforward sense, [with] its permanent
traversal, excess, or outflanking…[he] has not so much re-defined
philosophy (the traditional task of philosophy), as rendered it
permanently indefinite.” (Geoffrey
Bennington,
1998)
Is
the Christopher
Bennington
passage
above
an accurate description of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? To me, at
least, it is. However, Bennington is actually referring to
Jacques Derrida.
I hope, nonetheless, that my implicit point still holds. (Of course
it could also - to some extent at least - be a description of
Heidegger’s philosophy.)
In
terms of the quoted passage above (at the least), that’s partly why
there are so many cross words in the long-burgeoning Wittgenstein
Industry. It's also because “there
is no standard by which one can measure [him] without begging the
question against him”.
That was
Richard Rorty
speaking in 1976. However, Rorty, like Bennington above, isn’t
speaking about Wittgenstein: he's speaking about Heidegger! Rorty
continues
thus:
“[H]is
remarks…are beautifully designed to make one feel foolish when one
tries to find a bit of common ground on which to start an argument.”
That’s
also why there are as many interpretations of Wittgenstein as there
are people who've read his work.
Though
what if (as is often claimed) “there
is no authority outside the text”?
Then these multiple interpretations of Wittgenstein (as well as
Heidegger) may not be such a bad thing after all. It would also be a
good thing if Wittgensteinians themselves were to seek out an
explanation for this Wittgenstein interpretation-frenzy. However,
it's the case that many Continental philosophers have had part of the
answer to this ongoing situation.
For
example, the
following is a generally-accepted position (i.e., within much
Continental philosophy) on (all)
“texts”:
“…this
text cannot exhaustively control the reading you give it (no text can
read itself without remainder)…there is no end to reading, no
conceivable horizon of interpretation…” (Bennington, 1998)
It
may be even wiser to keep the above remarks in mind when specifically
considering Wittgenstein’s works. His works - almost more than any
other texts
in the analytic philosophy tradition – are made to suffer from what
Roland
Barthes
called “semiosis”
(as
used in a critical sense)
– that is, excessive over-interpretation.
I'm
not the only one to have been by perplexed by Wittgenstein’s work.
Many within the analytic - and indeed the Wittgensteinian - tradition
have dared to admit to their own perplexity.
For
example, take these
words
on
the Tractatus:
“It
is for the ordinary reader a book sealed with seven seals, of which
the significance is only to be revealed to the most esoteric
devotees, and which…embodies a very peculiar combination of
rigorous mathematical and logical thought and obscure mysticism.”
(Rudolf Metz, 1935)
Perhaps
it's a little more surprising to read Brand
Blanshard
writing in
these terms:
“…Wittgenstein…has
the strange distinction of having produced a work on logic beside
which the Logic of Hegel is luminously intelligible.” (1962)
The
heat that brings forth so many interpretations also brings forth a
copious amount of cross words too. Many commentators/admirers of
Wittgenstein think that
far too many
other commentators/admirers have “got
Wittgenstein wrong”; just
as many commentators/admirers of Heidegger believe that far
too many
other commentators/admirers have got
Heidegger wrong.
An
enigmatic and gnomic (or even inscrutable) philosopher such as
Wittgenstein was - and still is - bound to attract his fair share of
acolytes
or disciples. As Gilbert
Ryle once put it:
“[V]eneration
for Wittgenstein was so incontinent that mentions, for example, my
mentions, of any other philosopher were greeted with jeers.” (1946)
A
mystical philosopher who wrote profoundly mystical prose was almost
bound to be venerated
(as he
still is today). The very obscurity of (some of) Wittgenstein’s
utterances may well mean that his
initiates
have prided themselves on discovering the truth about their Master’s
work. After all, it takes a lot of hard work to get
Wittgenstein right.
So perhaps their self-praise is justified to some extent.
Of
course it needn't be said here that just about everything written so
far about Wittgenstein (in this section) is equally applicable to
Heidegger. No one ever gets
Heidegger right
either. They just get
him wrong.
To
sum up. Wittgenstein himself once said that only two people
understood his philosophy - and one of them was Gilbert Ryle!
How
To Get Unthought Wrong
Wittgenstein
“[Wittgenstein]
has penetrated deep into mystical ways of thought and feeling, but I
think…that what he likes best in mysticism is its power to make him
stop thinking.” -
Bertrand Russell
(circa
1919)
“Any
‘translation’ of [Heidegger’s] thought into terms that we can
understand, he argues, will most likely result in a misunderstanding.
Similarly, any attempt to locate him in the tradition that he rejects
will probably produce a false picture of his efforts.” (Continental
Philosophy Since 1750: the Rise and Fall of the Self,
by Robert
C. Solomon,
1988)
The
“problem
of life”
(as Wittgenstein once put it) isn't solved by philosophy: it's solved
by (more or less?) ignoring philosophy. Or, as Heidegger might have
put it, the problem
of life
is solved by deconstructing (traditional) philosophy.
According
to Wittgenstein himself, he once claimed to have read “little
philosophy”.
And what little he had read wasn't “too little, rather too much”.
Indeed whenever Wittgenstein read a philosophical book, he claimed
that it didn’t “improve
[his] thoughts
at all”. Rather, “it [made] them worse”.
There
was an hilarious
conversation
which was
notated
between Wittgenstein and H.
A. Prichard
that
exemplifies the former’s position on philosophy (at least at that
time):
Wittgenstein:
“If a man says to me, looking at the sky, ‘I think it will rain,
therefore I exist’, I do not understand him.”
Prichard:
“That’s all very fine; what we want to know is: is the cogito
valid or not?”
The
conversation above at least shows that Wittgenstein had a sense of
humour (despite opinions to the contrary). Strangely enough, the man
Wittgenstein referred to actually offered a (kind of) valid argument
for the Cogito,
at least in a very limited sense. Prichard (presumably a typical
English analytic philosopher of the time) responded drearily and
typically to Wittgenstein’s witty take on the Cogito.
It must of course be said that Wittgenstein was perhaps being just a
little disingenuous and rhetorical when he claimed not to
“understand” the man who looked at the sky to prove his own
existence.
Despite
what's so far been said, Bertrand Russell might still have been a
little too hard on Wittgenstein when he
claimed that the
“later
Wittgenstein…seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to
have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity
unnecessary” (1944).
Perhaps
Russell’s language above is still a bit too strong when applied to
Wittgenstein himself. After all, extremely serious and difficult
thought would still be needed in order to pave the way which led to
making “serious thinking…an activity [which was] unnecessary”.
Alternatively, if one just came along and said, “Fuck thought!”,
not many people would listen. In any case, mysticism (of various
kinds) has always been abstruse
and profound. (Or, if one is cynical, profound because
abstruse.)
Wittgenstein
thought that many philosophical problems are in fact non-problems;
and, in addition, that many philosophical questions were in fact
“pseudo-questions”
(a favourite term of Rudolf
Carnap
at one time).
For
example, the questions “What is time?” and “What is a number?”
were deemed to be insoluble by the late Wittgenstein. That wasn't
because they are too deep and profound. Rather, Wittgenstein believed
that they're insoluble because they're simply “nonsensical”.
He also believed that those who ask these questions are simply
“misusing
language”.
Despite
all that, perhaps part of the the truth is that Wittgenstein did
indeed grow tired of “serious thinking”. In this context,
however, that may be understandable to us if we bear in mind the fact
that, according to Wittgenstein himself, the sort of questions just
specified couldn't - by their very nature - be answered. And those
other perennial “philosophical problems” couldn't - again, by
their very nature - be solved. This was no doubt partly the reason
for Wittgenstein’s frustration with - and his ennui
towards
- traditional philosophical problems and questions.
The
Point of Pointlessness
On
the other hand, it might have been more than simply a case of certain
questions and problems being insoluble or meaningless. What if
Wittgenstein was against certain types of questions and problems not
because they're insoluble or nonsensical; but simply because he
simply couldn’t see the
point
of them?
All
that's been said so far can be put in the context of the following
exchange.
In
response to something Wittgenstein said, Alan
Turing replied:
“I
see your point.”
To this
reply Wittgenstein had nothing but contempt. He said: “I have no
point!” So, in a certain sense, we can say that Wittgenstein wasn't
that far removed from the Zen
master who
questions
the point of points.
We can also say that to have
a point
(in Wittgenstein’s later eyes) is also to admit to oneself that one
is trapped within the “language
game”
that is traditional Western philosophy. This was a place that
Wittgenstein didn't want to be (at least not during his later years).
It
can now be added that it was perhaps Wittgenstein’s intention not
to spell out the
point
of many of his, well, points. It might well have been part of his
intention to indulge in a kind of unthought
or thoughtlessness.
At least (in a Heideggerian vein) in such a state it may be possible
to genuinely question the
point of thought
(if only thought as seen by “traditional Western philosophy”).
In
the Tractatus,
on the other hand, it's been assumed (by certain commentators) that
Wittgenstein simply believed that his readers would already be
familiar with the work of Frege and Russell; not to mention the work
of Kant and Schopenhauer. Similarly with his Philosophical
Investigations.
Many people find it difficult to comprehend what precisely
Wittgenstein is actually trying to say in that work. Wittgenstein
might have actually said to these people: That’s
because I'm not saying anything!
Or, more charitably, we can say that what Wittgenstein was actually
trying to do in that book was diagnose our philosophical confusions
by means of particular
examples
and particular
counter-examples.
There
is a problem here: if we don’t have the same confusions as
Wittgenstein, then we certainly won't see the
point
of his words.
Heidegger
So
what about Heidegger?
Wasn’t
Heidegger similarly “tired of serious thinking” throughout most
of his life? Didn’t he want to get back to pre-Socratic and
Medieval
unthought
(or thoughtlessness)?
Didn’t he also question the words, concepts and tools with which we
philosophise?
The
following is a long passage from Rorty on
Heidegger’s attempt to reach a state of unthought
(or thoughtlessness)
that was at the same time still - what the continentals call -
“onto-theological”:
“…Heidegger
ended up…as a thinker who tried to get away from
beliefs…altogether. He wanted a language that was not hammered out
as an instrument for communicating…but one that ‘is what it says’
(a compliment he once paid to Greek). He wanted to discover a
language that was as close to silence as possible…Being
and Time
was (like A
Common Faith…)
a proposal to teach us a new way of talking – one that would let us
ask about God or Being without thinking of ourselves as
superscientists… He leans over so far backward to avoid being one
more superscientist, one more metaphysician, one more theologian…He
merely points and hints [like Wittgenstein in his Philosophical
Investigations]…Heidegger
doesn’t employ any method. …in his later work he takes care to
assert only sentences that cannot be construed as…beliefs (thus
making it impossible to converse with him at all).”
In
many respects, a large amount of post-Hegelian examples of
Continental philosophy also attempted to acquire a state of unthought
(or thoughtlessness).
It did so by stepping outside what Franz
Rosenzweig
(1886-1929) called “the
cognitive All”.
In such a state, certain philosophers found themselves free from the
wicked gaze and control of Reason and Science. Or, in Rosenzweig’s
own words
again, the philosopher found
himself
“in
the utter singularity of his individuality…[in which he stepped]
out of the world which [only] knew itself as the conceivable world,
out of the All of philosophy” (1921/1970).
Heidegger
& Wittgenstein as Mystics (Non-Philosophers)
Although
Heidegger and Wittgenstein were philosophers, this shouldn't (or
doesn't) automatically mean that they couldn’t also have been
mystics of some kind (e.g., philosophical
mystics).
So
what is a mystic?
It's
often said that mystics attempt to overcome strict (or rule-bound)
ways of thinking (at least when it comes to spiritual or religious
matters). Many mystics have also insisted that heaven, Christ and God
are not in fact to be found in a distant realm – i.e., one that's
more or less untouched by us in our present lives. Instead they're to
be found “hidden within our hearts”. When, finally, we find them,
then we can bring them to life with desire, love, or with acts of the
will.
So
what about this “mystical tradition”?
It
was a tradition that nearly always placed a strong emphasis on the
limits of religious language. It also stressed the need to go beyond
what can be called “ontological
objectification”
(an aspect of mysticism that certainly appealed to Heidegger).
Finally,
in many respects mystics have generally wanted - or tried - to rise
above what they saw as the limitations of knowledge (or knowledge-
acquisition). Instead, many mystics thought that we should quite
simply replace knowledge with love, devotion, “heightened”
psychological states, etc.
In
certain respects Wittgenstein didn't even see himself as (solely) a
philosopher. He certainly didn't see himself as an essentially
professional (or academic) philosopher. He often veered, instead,
towards mysticism or even – sometimes - towards straightforward
religiosity
(in certain cases, also towards artistic expression). Wittgenstein
himself wrote
that “philosophy
ought really to be written as a poetic composition”
(1931). Of course the Tractatus
can – in certain ways – be seen as a poetic (or even a
Nietzsche-like) poetic-prose composition. On the other hand, it's
also been said that the Tractatus's
epigrammatic (or gnomic) prose style is more a result of
Wittgenstein’s assumption that his readers will have already read
Frege and Russell; not to mention Kant and Schopenhauer. That is, he
simply didn’t have the time (at the time) to fill in all the dots.
(Wittgenstein
wrote most of his Tractatus
as a soldier during World War One.)
Despite that possibility, in 1912 Russell once told Wittgenstein that
he ought not simply to state what he thought: he should also provide
arguments for it. To which Wittgenstein
replied:
“Arguments
would spoil its beauty. I would feel as if I were dirtying a flower
with muddy hands.”
I
therefore believe that Wittgenstein was being quite
intentionally
poetic and epigrammatic (as well as intentionally mystical and
esoteric) when he wrote his Tractatus.
Heidegger
too was also keen to express a poetic vision.
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