Wittgenstein in exile

262 Pages·2011·1.368 MB·English

by  Klagge, James Carl

Wittgenstein in Exile

Wittgenstein in Exile
James C. Klagge
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by the MIT Press. Printed and bound
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Klagge, James Carl, 1954–.
Wittgenstein in exile / James C. Klagge.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01534-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951. I. Title.
B3376.W564k55 2010
192—dc22
2010030452
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Wer das Dichten will verstehen Who would the poem understand
Muß ins Land der Dichtung gehen; Must go into the poem’s land;
Wer den Dichter will verstehen Who would the poet understand
Muß ins Dichters Lande gehen. Must go into the poet’s lands.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Motto to “Notes & Discussions towards a Better
Understanding of West-österlich Divan,” 1819
The searcher has the realization thrust upon him that the historical era he has sought
and, if fortunate, called again into partial existence as the world of the poet, is com-
pletely alien to the age for which he is evoking it. Values and ideals shift; what one
age sought, another may spurn. . . . Neither goal is in itself unworthy, but they are
blind to each other’s virtues and have little or no charity for each other’s weaknesses.
—Winthrop H. Root, Introduction to Poems and Letters of Nikolaus Lenau, 1964
Forty years ago Wittgenstein’s teaching came to me as a warning against certain in-
tellectual and spiritual dangers by which I was strongly tempted. These dangers still
surround us. It would be a tragedy if well-meaning commentators should make it
appear that his writings were now easily assimilable into the very intellectual milieu
they were largely a warning against.
—M. O’C. Drury, Draft of Recollections, 1966
My thoughts are one hundred percent Hebraic.
—Wittgenstein to Drury, 1949

Contents
Preface  ix
Abbreviations  xi
Introduction 1
1 No One Understands Me 5
2 Can We Understand Wittgenstein? 19
3 What Is Understanding? 41
4 Exile 47
5 Alienation or Engagement 61
6 The Work of Exile 73
7 Philosophy and Science 83
8 The Evolution of an Idea 97
9 Science and the Mind 115
10 Das erlösende Wort 125
11 Wittgenstein in the Twenty-First Century 143
Notes  155
Bibliography  217
Index  239

Preface
This book is my attempt to see important aspects of the work of Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889–1951) in relation to his life and how he saw himself. It
does not attempt to cover all aspects of his life or his work, but to see ways
in which they fit together. Still, I hope it covers enough ground to show
that the fit is significant and interesting. I try to take seriously Wittgen-
stein’s insistence that he would not be understood. That may not seem a
very promising line for a book—to come to understand why he cannot be
understood—but I hope that it will make more sense as we proceed. I do
think that in important ways Wittgenstein is a distant figure from us, and
that it is important to see why that is so. This distance is embodied in the
metaphor of exile.
Though I have been thinking about the ideas in this book for a long
time, the opportunity to bring them together into a book was afforded me
by Virginia Tech, which provided a teaching reduction in the fall term of
2006 and a research assignment during the spring term of 2007. Were it
not for these, it is hard to say whether the book would have been written.
In a number of places I have made use of passages from Wittgenstein
that were written in German and have not been officially translated. Over
the years I have kept translations of such passages, but have not always
noted their provenance. Some I have translated myself. In general terms, I
have made use of translations by S. Stephen Hilmy, Anthony Kenny, Brian
McGuinness, Ray Monk, Michael Nedo, Rush Rhees, and David Stern. I
want to thank Elizabeth Bischoff and Deborah Stoudt for their help with
my own translations.
In writing this book I have drawn on, or even reproduced portions of,
some of my earlier publications. Parts of chapters 2 and 4 reproduce portions
of the paper “Wittgenstein in Exile,” originally published in Religion and
Wittgenstein’s Legacy, edited by D. Z. Phillips and M. von der Ruhe, Ashgate,
2005, used with kind permission of Ashgate, Gower & Lund Humphries Pub-
lishing. Chapter 5 mostly reproduces “When Are Ideologies Irreconcilable?