I am willing to accept that anything is possible. With that said, life and what we think we know about life, becomes a matter of probabilities. What is the probability of a human being born, exiting from the body of the woman who supported and nurtured it from the time the sperm cell invaded her egg cell, as a complete individual with all the knowledge of life it will ever have already in its understanding? Pretty low I would assume. The point being, a grievous error of judgment committed by a person with limited information and experience should be judged less harshly than the same error committed by a person with more information and experience. A transgression of youth is much less serious than the same transgression at maturity. I also believe that, like Herman Hesse expresses in his book Siddhartha, enlightenment can only be attained by an individual that rejects institutional learning, and gains wisdom from their own experiences, using the teachings of others to increase knowledge but not wisdom. I do not know if this ability is shared by all people, but practiced by only a few, or it is the gift/curse of only a few. I do believe that it is realized, if not understood, at a very young age. This is the only path to an open mind, willing to accept that anything is possible.
2
An appropriate article for Yom Kippur. As a demonstration of the power of personal reformation, it is due to Wittgenstein 's influence that Rowland Hutt, who is cited in the article, became a medic in WW-II and then a middle school teacher for the rest of his life. Though Wittgenstein discouraged Rowland from marrying, my Aunt Lotte was victorious. Wittgenstein showed his kindness by sharing his war rations with my mother, who was an undernourished teenaged German refugee at the time.
3
Clearly Wittgenstein would be diagnosed with an anger management issue This is a common diagnosis in our age of rage, but the entire history of humanity as demarked by violence on the micro and macro level can be viewed as one long anger management fail.
As a sufferer, I have concluded that the root of anger is the gap between our great expectations and the shortfall of reality.
If we accept outcomes as mere feedback on our performance, we are less inclined to be captives of rage. We may respond by accepting ourselves and recalibrating our ambitions, or strive to improve our abilities so our grasp matches our reach. But continuing to rage against our plight without changing our attitudes or our capacities is a formula for the self-loathing, guilt ridden, tortuous life led by Wittgenstein.
There is no perfection to be had in this world. That’s why faith in the next is so useful, and, if it is the ultimate delusion (as Einstein said of time itself), why it’s so persistent.
If those without sin didn’t cast the first stone, at themselves or others, the world would be a happy peaceful place.
"Don't you know that a *true* falsehood, if one may call it that, is hated by all gods and humans? --What do you mean? --I mean that no one is willing to tell falsehoods to the most important part of himself about the most important things, but of all places he is most afraid to have falsehood there. --I still don't understand. --That's because you think I'm saying something deep. I simply mean that to be false to one's soul about the things that are, to be ignorant and to have and hold falsehood there, is what everyone would least of all accept, for everyone hates a falsehood in that place most of all."
Plato, Republic 382a-b
2
Interesting how both "examples" of whatever it was which may have troubled our brilliant philosopher involved striking children. One wonders whether, in his quest for perfection, it ever occurred to Wittgenstein to apologize to the students and their families for his seeming inability to teach without resorting to violence.
The second example is particularly instructive:
"In 1926, a frail 11-year-old named Josef Haidbauer collapsed and fell unconscious after Wittgenstein hit him. Wittgenstein sent the class home, carried Haidbauer to the headmaster’s office to be seen by the doctor, and fled... Wittgenstein was exonerated; his colleagues defended him and he was even asked to continue."
So his colleagues "defended him." In an era where beating schoolchildren was apparently deemed within the realm of reasonable adult behavior, one has to ask: What does purported "knowledge of oneself" consist of, if it does not include questioning why engaging in such behavior could ever be acceptable or moral?
33
Interesting that Wittgenstein is so highly rated, give the remark by Anscombe that she was "deeply suspicious of anyone’s claim to have understood Wittgenstein.” The same is true of Heidegger of course.
Maybe that is why others prefer to rate more highly the American Peirce or the Englishman Whitehead. But on the other hand we may just think that such claims and rankings are silly and just symbolic of an author's attempt to gain attention -- and that confessionals are best left to priests or ascetics.
7
@Geof Rayns
Peirce is the wrong century and in a survey of Philo Profs - Whitehead barely got a mention.
The top vote getters were the usual suspects - 1st Wittgenstein then randomly Heidegger, Rawls, Lewis Quine, Russell which seems a sensible list to me
1
Vanity and pride with oneself and one's accomplishments without any true modesty nor insight into oneself can easily produce the kind of impulsive act and instinctive self preservation reaction which Wittgenstein exhibited. Despite his acclaimed stature as a philosopher he was not intellectually swift enough to recognize what he had done was reprehensible and required an immediate apology and taking of responsibility for his misdeed. Instead he had to struggle with the disappointment with himself that he felt and only long after found the courage to confess his transgression. Given the tender age of the recipient of his loss of control, he acted to long afterwards to have mitigated any damage.
5
Additionally, his motivation to confess appears to have been solely to make himself feel better. No concern for the victim of his actions appears to have been expressed. He seems to have used this so-called courage as a blind to hide from himself his own selfishness.
7
@Lauren
"appears .... no concern ... appears ... seems ..."
Yet you have an opinion on that matter? I don't understand.
''For “only death,” he also wrote in his war diaries, “gives life its meaning.” - Sure, most people that have anything close to a near death experience are somewhat shocked to not treat life as boring and be complacent. However, we cannot all have near death experiences.
When thinking about life, the primary (or what should be) question is where do we come from ? The answer cannot be given, and the concept of nothingness beforehand (I would submit) should be enough and the equivalent of a near death experience.
There is also the flip side to this question, that some are consumed by a never ending series of ''whys'' that ultimately drives them mad. Worse still, there are those that break the norms of ''society'' and its laws to do whatever they want, believing there is no meaning to it all.
Philosophy (in general) steps in to give everything meaning, and the concept is to attach weight to things, so that we do not float away metaphorically. I can understand that. We can celebrate that even, along with the ''deep thinkers'' that are pure in their thinking. (and sometimes acts)
There will always be the question why though ...
5
@FunkyIrishman One of the basic steps to understanding is to abandon completely the quest for "why." It's hard to answer because its subject doesn't exist.
2
@FunkyIrishman
Philosophy as a study seeks to understand the why behind the what and the how and the when and the where and the who, as well as describing who cares. It uses logic and rational analysis to understand and rational explanations.
People construct explanations for life which are called philosophies but they may or may not be as rigorous in rational terms as is the study of philosophy.
Wittgenstein is not accepted by all highly thoughtful intellectuals as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century but he certainly has impressed a great many that he might be. This incident does not exhibit anything but the fact that he was vain and proud as well as intelligent. It does no real good to admit to a mistake years afterwards for an act which causes harm to a child and also falsely accuses the child of lying. It would seem that a man of his intelligence knew when he did it that it was wrong and that he was not ready to accept responsibility for it, then. Only when he felt safe from any repercussions did he admit what he did. That may be an instance of candid disclosure but there was nothing ethical nor admirable about it.
17
@Casual Observer It's not about his confession to others, but about his own confession to himself. Only he can determine his own sincerity. Most people, as another commentor stated, find it difficult to confront past actions that go against their (current) self image. Doing so is helpful for self-improvement.
1
@RamS
The man who wrote Amazing Grace did what is being asserted Wittgenstein is supposed to have done, here. But what he did was to do harm and then avoided responsibility, just to save himself. He knew what he did was wrong and no self confession was ever involved. Instead, he rationalized having done a bad act for which their was no excuse. He would have had to go mad or wait for dementia to erase the deed from his mind.
Western philosophy is powerful and often even useful. This story, however, highlights one of the common ways that it can mislead and even be counter-productive.
Wittgenstein is obsessively focused on himself. It's all very complicated for him. He digs, he analyzes, he tries confession, apparently not to much avail. “Nothing is so difficult,” Wittgenstein wrote in 1938, “as not deceiving oneself.”’ His vision of the authentic self is perhaps always beyond reach..."
Much eastern philosophy, in contrast, does not dig to find one's "authentic self," but rather peels away the extraneous and the phony skins. It's the sculptor who sees his/her job as removing the rock to reveal the image inside it. The three steps of accumulating data, confusion, and understanding have little to do with analysis other than realizing that one has to leave it behind. Poor Kierkegaard was even more a victim of this counter-productive over-thinking, maybe even creating, his own problem.
Actually "becoming our authentic selves" is trivial once one does it.
27
@Joel bergsman So true but we are surely also products of our environment. Witgenstein's battle is unusual in the context of materialist Vienna. A need to confront the worst in oneself is surely a step in a right direction, even if the ego is still present?
1
Most of us seem to lie to ourselves, it therefore takes a brave soul to remove the rose colored glasses and to look in the mirror at our fully revealed self. I don't think that first look is the hardest however, it is to me, the second look which is the most difficult task. Now we know what to expect, we know the nature of what will be looking back at us, finding the courage to take that second look, is to me, true bravery and where wisdom begins.
56
@Bruce1253
That's a nice way to put it. The second look is the tough one, but it offers a higher reward.
7
While I'm no professional philosopher, I've long been impressed by the dazzling insights Wittgenstein provided us, particularly into the nature of language, the very tool with which we do philosophy. As for self purification, we can never achieve perfection. The key, however, is that we are creatures of habit, and so can create the habit of self examination.
Thanks for this provocative piece on this important thinker.
36
@John I challenge you to specify five dazzling insights of Wittgenstein. Actually two will do.
How appropriate to read about Wittgenstein's confession just as we are getting ready to hear Professor Blasey Ford. Thank you for publishing this article.
Even though I do not agree that Wittgenstein was the greatest philosopher of the 20th Century, I believe he was a sincere and honest man to his last breath. Not only he gave up his huge fortune (his father was one of the wealthiest if not the wealthiest man in Europe) and lived like a graduate student in Cambridge where he taught for the rest of his life, he also helped the less fortune whenever he could (including the Georg Trakl, one of the most underrated poets ever).
I wish we had more people like him today who confessed what bothered their conscience.
77
@Blunt how nice you mention Trakl, poet of the crepuscular blues......
1
Recognition of having harmed someone should be followed, where possible, by atonement - making amends to the victim, not just confession to become better in oneself. That said, Wittgenstein was a remarkable man, a genius in many ways.
5
I found these letters much more interesting than the original article. For myself, I find no absolution for my sins. I relive many of them on a regular basis and I have learned to accept the fact that I, and others, are sinners. My sins are not major sins and are mostly stupid, insensitive things that I said to others that I later realized were hurtful. I find that I cannot rid myself of these sins but that I can become more careful and more considerate of others. Additionally, I have become more accepting of other peoples behavior and while I may not like them and their behavior, I do not necessarily dislike them.
3
To thy own self be true.
1
Are we ever not our "Authentic Selves".
One moment we may be brave -
another moment a coward.
One moment quite generous -
another moment quite stingy.
Wholly in love with someone who
accepts us in spite of our faults -
wholly hating the person who has
now rejected us in spite of our virtues.
Does anyone really know themselves
or are we as Saint Augustine said -
strangers even unto our own selves.
3
If not the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, certainly the most incomprehensibly overrated. https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/why-they-suck-the-genius-of-ludwig-w...
While all of this stuff is way over my pay grade, I find it somewhat of a parallel to what's going on right now, right here at home.
As our emperor continues to hide the naked truth about himself, to himself, and the sycophants who enable him continue to fawn over his resplendent wardrobe, the rest of us must no longer remain complacent.
Vote.
4
Sounds like Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.
2
Perhaps, a man fearing life: https://youtu.be/khrx-zrG460
Whew! Confessing that you didn't confess. That is convoluted.
One must have guilt to confess. Guilt over self-deception doesn't make the grade. Especially, when you ignore the real moral transgression.
3
Sounds simply like a Catholic with a heightened sense of vanity to me.
Not to worry. Wittgenstein's fellow pupil at the Linz Realschule, Adolf Hitler, set a much higher bar for guilt and confessions.
Wittgenstein's scruples about dishonesty in the child beating incidents are trivial in comparison.
Unless Wittgenstein really was the recruiter of the Cambridge Five and the instigator of Hitler's antisemitism, as alleged in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jew_of_Linz?wprov=sfla1
My initial impulse was to dismiss this piece as a failed monologue from a Woody Allen movie...however, on second thought, I think that Wittgenstein might have been loitering around the outskirts of film noir. Unfortunately, Mr. Beale has failed to see the connection...
1
We each live our lives out of the basic evolutionary demands of survival. When the concept of courage demands that we risk survival to obtain approval and presume that the greatest courage and approval in society is obtained with subjecting one's self to the maximum danger without consideration of the fundamental value of facing that maximum risk then that exercise descends into foolishness or insanity or, from an objective point of view, comedy. Every reasonable person understands that lying is a fundamental interaction in human society and lying, even to one's self can be a survival procedure of great utility. The dynamics of politics and strategies and advertising utilize dishonesty as a fundamental procedure of existence. The end product of that lie is crucial to judgement.
2
@Jan Sand Forwarding to Rudy Guliani for his Trump defense brief
Wittgenstein confessed the deed (of lying) but seemed never to confront why this upset him so much. He seems to have taken the strangeness of his family and of himself for granted, working within it but not about it. Perhaps here he was overwhelmed and his courage failed him.
1
Human Beings Are Truth Machines
Wittgenstein was from one the wealthiest families in Austro-Hungary. He started by questioning that (and thereafter rejected the distraction wealth implied). Creative thinkers always question what has not been questioned before.
All animals are more or less specialized. Human specialization is truth. Not just truth, but truth seeking. This means that the deepest human motivations have been evolutionary selected to foster the search for truth, honesty, authenticity. That involves loving truth, honesty, authenticity. But not just that. It means the tendency, in the human species, to love to confess, and being haunted by remorse have become “instincts”, or, more generally, “tropisms”.
All knowledge about nature we have is the forte of human beings. However, it always originated by introspection. Indeed, we humans have theories about everything, including what is obvious and shouldn’t be questioned and why it deserves silence. New knowledge always start by questioning precisely what is viewed as obvious, or not worth talking about. And this starts with criticizing one mind inside one individual. In a further stage, exposing the problem(s) to some other mind(s) helps.
The work of understanding the universe some more, always goes first, through the work of understanding oneself. One may even say that the need for a necessary introspective preliminary in one individual, never done before, is the indication that really new science may now blossom.
Calvinistic and narrow minded reproaches do not elevate the subject. I do believe it is a failure of the will. Our understanding is piercing but our will fluctuates, would that it were otherwise. The judgments offered by commentators here seem to forget that there would be nothing left to judge would not the self-accused had brought it to the light of the forum in the first place. Do we often bring out what is reproachable in ourselves to the light of day and confession? Wittgenstein appeared to express genuine remorse, surely more useful than the moralizing critiques of others and left us something to chew on for ourselves. Remorse gives the possibility of differing action, we have something to hold onto, the memory of an unfortunate act we wish never to repeat. But joy-killing Calvinism tends to seep to the surface as if we were all walking on a superfund site (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites) watching out for proof of the poison below. Wittgenstein's remarks are liberating and if his remorse is genuine there is a chance he will not repeat his actions or at least not place himself in a situation where the action - due to failure of the will - would appear to repeat itself.
1
The problem with confession today, in the modern world of zero tolerance, is that there is no longer any forgiveness. That virtue has been destroyed by the elevation of outrage to the top of our emotional virtues. Perhaps, 36 years ago, Judge Kavanaugh committed the sexual assault described by his accuser. Let us also suppose that he is a different man today, having exorcised those impulses and devoted himself to righteous living. Should he confess, or not? If he were to confess, his honesty would be punished with outrage, humiliation, and quite possibly job loss. If he plausibly denies, he will sail into the Supreme Court and his family will not suffer. I predict he will take the modern high road and deny, deny, deny.
10
Very interesting timing for an essay about the power of confession. How would the dynamic of and what would the result be in the Senate were Brett Kavanaugh to confess to the allegation of sexual assault when he was a teen if it were indeed factual? Denial and self-deception are not qualities one would like to see in a Supreme Court Judge.
2
I see, Wittgenstein had a problem with violence. No, it's not the confession which matters most, but the violence.
As a religious teacher once said, "When you have wronged someone, you must restore fourfold." Where is the fourfold restoration to the beaten children? Or to others like them? The world is filled with adults who still suffer from the trauma of chiildhood violence inflicted earlier by parents and teachers.
If he had truly "known himself," he would have admitted the urge to harm others, and asked himself how this related to violence in the larger world.
Note the parallels with "confession" in the Catholic church. All those hundreds of child molesting priests doubtless "confessed" their sins multiple times, and felt the purgative of (supposed) forgiveness. What was needed was not self-forgiveness but an understanding of the harm they had wrought, and were continuing to inflict, on other vulnerable human beings.
8
I think that the majority of our human failings is due to our failure to follow Socrates' dictum to know ourselves. Unfortunately we over identify-ourselves with our ego, believing that our ego is the be-all and end-all of who we are. In fact, so much of what makes us human lies below the ego in the unconscious. If we look deeper within ourselves, learn to listen and understand what our unconscious it telling us, we can be better people. Those who live based solely on what the ego says, are making decisions for themselves with limited and/or faulty information.
6
@liberallee
It is not the un-conscious
but the sub-conscious that mostly
decides what we will and will not do.
2
I studied Wittgenstein in college...for 10 weeks. I made as much sense as I could out of his work. But, in the end, it left me with the feeling that he was the most self absorbed person to ever walk the face of the earth. I vowed never to over think another thing for as long as I lived...
8
To me, this essay seems to seek to elevate a (sadly) common-place character flaw: Wittgenstein lied about hurting an individual, into a philosophical problem to be surmounted by Wittgenstein's intellect - a monumental problem conquered by a momental act of will ("Of course I want to be perfect.")
Rather than seeing Wittgenstein as courageous, to me, this essay portrays him as a standard narcissistic (if one of an intellectual bent): by way of one example, he volunteered for dangerous duty to meet his own psychological needs.
One has a sense here a professional philosopher complexifies rather derivative mundane interior mental acts of a self-tortured personality to suggest that his professional endeavor has more to offer to the world than it in fact does . . .. One is hard pressed to point to seminal contributions of professional philosophers to the public intellectual debates of the past several decades. Perhaps their near-obsession with an individual from 80 years ago such as Wittgenstein who has made no identifiable lasting contributions to modern thought is one cause.
5
@William M. Palmer, Esq.
You could not be more wrong about Ludwig.
His influence is everywhere and will be far
more lasting than you might ever suppose.
1
@John Brown
John, you write as if Wittgenstein is comparable to the ether - everywhere, but not directly discernible.
I challenge you to point out a significant, concrete contribution of Wittgenstein to how we currently think about the world nowadays . . ..
In my view and in my experience, the reason professional philosophers focus on Wittgenstein is that the opaque nature of his corpus provides cover for empty debates that make scant progress. The logicism that Wittgenstein promulgated/and then the anti-logicism he spouted are confined to a tiny intellectual space that has been clearly superseded by cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, systems biology (and on and on . ..).
@William M. Palmer, Esq.
Since Aristotle and Plato, all of our western philosophers seem to be insane. Why is that?
Until we acknowledge our potential for doing harm, we are dangerous to ourselves and to others.
If you want to see someone who has never faced his own wrongdoing, you need look no further than Trump.
Pride and selfishness reside in all of us. Children are not born saints. We learn to be more tolerant and generous and accepting. There is no other way, imnsho.
5
Just want to give a shout out to Bruce Duffy's wonderful novel about Wittgenstein called "The World As I Found It." WIttgenstein was an extraordinary and highly unusual person who grew up in an extraordinary and highly unusual family. This article doesn't really give you a sense of what an exceptional person he was. But the novel does. I encourage anyone interested in Wittgenstein to read it.
3
Though he would never have put it this way,
Wittgenstein’s work as a philosopher and as a man in the world was to strip away the false self, in Thomas Merton’s phrase, and to find the true self, the person he was meant to be. This is the journey each of us must make. Wittgenstein made his with consummate precision and elusive mystery. How did he do it? To recall his own words: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”
The author is much more knowledgeable about Wittgenstein's life history than me - but I know he was from a very unhappy family. More than one of his siblings committed suicide. I've not come across any attempt to account for this. His background surely contributed to his issues and self-doubt.
It is common to wish to flee from doubt, to see it as a weakness, to want nothing to do with it - but doubt keeps you honest, keeps you searching, keeps you growing. Of course you can over-do-it. To continue to doubt that of which you are certain, have very good reason to be certain, is neurotic. But to never doubt, to think all you believe must be right, is far worse.
Wittgenstein received great acclaim for his "Tractatus". His propensity to doubt earnestly, surely led to him recognising the problems with that approach and attitude to philosophy - and language - and conceiving of his masterpiece: his "Philosophical Investigations".
Bertrand Russell had the good sense to eventually divorce himself from his relatively youthful fetish for Hegelian obscurantism - but then embraced the equally perverse opposite extreme of Logical Positivism. Wittgenstein - in contrast - leapt from the blithe self-satisfaction of certitude rendered on a page, into the real and murky world of language in use, and into immortality.
(Or at least the high esteem of highly educated human beings as long as such may live. Peace.)
2
Wittgenstein was by far the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. You can see his maturation from Tractatus to Philosophical Investigations. In this treatise you can sense his struggle. It's the best piece of philosophical writing I have ever read. If you are interested in philosophy pick up a copy and read it. It's like no other philosophy I have ever read. I knew he struggled in his life, but I didn't know the details. Thanks for the story maybe more people will pick up his books.
1
@CBH I agree. Thanks for the post, as I ran out of room on my post.
When I was young wanted to be a philosopher, turning out abstruse tracts wrought from my brilliant intellection. Now that I'm at the other end of life, I can say with certainty that a handful of simple aphorisms carried me further in life than the greatest works of those esteemed thinkers.
10
I find Mr. Beale's exploration of Wittgenstein's torment entirely over-intellectualized. As an undergraduate whose study was heavily focused on Wittgenstein, I was enthralled by his work (the Tractatus aside), and in graduate school wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on his importance for conceptualizing contemporary psychology. Mr. Beale's rendition of things seems to ignore the roots of the emotional life this man clearly struggled with, and the personal and professional consequences of his torment. As a gay man myself, and a psychologist who has worked for decades in psychotherapy with hundreds of gay men, Wittgenstein's tumultuous life is all too familiar. Yes, he lived with guilt about his sexuality and his Judaism, but he also lived with the kind of self-loathing, self-doubt and compensatory, often angry, arrogance that stigmatization and shame routinely breed. In shame, the last thing we feel we can tolerate is knowing ourselves or having our selves known to others. Our emotional lives are lonely, painful and self-destructive, and I would be surprised if a good measure of Wittgenstein's "courage" in the war and elsewhere was not a suicidal gesture aimed at relieving him of his torment. I am astonished by how much of the biography and discussion about this man fails to discuss the "homosexual issue." Perhaps that discussion would diminish his work and influence, and muddy the waters of his admirers? Well that's another problem that should be honestly attended to.
30
@Walt Odets
I wholeheartedly agree! What we have here is a clear description of a self-loathing so strong it rose to suicidal impulses that were dangerously acted out. Speaking of self-delusion, this essay's description of Wittgenstein's courage is quite a stunning example of the antithesis of authenticity.
1
@Walt Odets: yes, bravo! Exactly.
So, Anscome is deeply suspicious of anyone's claim to understand Wittgenstein. No doubt. He made little sense. In fact, though he was lionized for his Tractatus, he rejected it himself. Why people still think it is brilliant, I will never understand. What it had was the trappings of philosophy. It was make-believe Spinoza, written by, yes, an extraordinary (he was very brilliant, but also undirected), but very disturbed man. His striking a child was hardly the only incident in his life, though most of it was verbal abuse. His only other real work was one thought told over and over about language.
You might say, well, maybe you just don't understand him. Well, at least his acolyte would not be suspicious of me.
Last, yes, he was a brave soldier, but what was so brave about his admission to another person years after the fact that he struck a student and then lied about it? That was for him - not for the student.
I can hardly imagine anyone more overrated than Wittgenstein.
2
@DHEisenberg
He uses war to make himself more authentic? More alive? He could not see what a crime it was to have started the war in the first place Others did, Einstein among them, and he was hardly a philosopher.
1
@DHEisenberg Trump? McConnell? Paul Ryan? Ted Cruz?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senators_in_the_115t...
@DHEisenberg
A few come to mind:
Hume
Nietzsche
Hegel
Chomsky
Rogers
Friedmann
Freud...
1
The desire for authenticity and honesty about self, are like all desires, poison when they are self-serving.
10
Of course the endless ramifications of was he, wasn't he, did he, or didn't, could tie us in knots. The most basic element of to be self-critical, or to be honest with oneself are crucial in self-development. My mother told me occasionally as a child to have "a little reckon-up with yourself". "You know what is right or not right" she would say, and who can escape that basic truth? But what if Wittgenstein was innocent of the original charge, but later confessed only to make it appear that he was more honest, and thus superior than others? And then, what if he later confessed that the confession was a lie? At what point may we be assured we have reached the point of objective truth and thus wisdom?
1
One of my philosophy professors in college was an acolyte of Wittgenstein. One day he filled up three greenboard panels with a mathematical formula and then turned to us for comments. Someone in the front row went up to him and whispered that his fly was open. That was symbolic for me. I could never understand what Wittgenstein's version of philosophy had to do with life in the world. I'm glad he himself eventually gave it up.
5
@David You need to read the later Wittgenstein, then. Completely the opposite of the early stuff. Worth reading.
@David
"Showing the fly out of the fly bottle. "
Ludwig was one of the few who tried to live
out the implications of his philosophical ideas.
1
@David
Maybe the fact that Wittgenstein's logical version of philosophy was illogical as well as ridiculous was a fact that helped him give it up. He succeeded in conning Bertrand Russell which is a coup for any mad genius but why do we still pay attention to the other pointless ravings he continued to spout for the rest of his life? One does not have to be a genius to be a great philosopher but one does have to make sense.
Poor Wittgenstein tortured himself with thought throughout his whole life. And if he thinks that he understood the great philosophical questions, he was wrong.
When is the Western world going to learn the Zen lesson of just dropping all thought? This is the way to avoid self delusion. Endless rumination is pointless and only leads to more confusion. In dropping all thought the mind settles and clears. Then we see reality as it actually is. There is no confusion. No anxiety over who we should be, or how we should act. There is just the raw experience of this pristine moment.
14
@Matt Mullen
And when you get up at 3:00 AM
to head the call of nature and you
stub your toe
do you just revel in the raw experience
of this pristine moment.
1
I read Wittgenstein was so angry at a young girl in his class hthat in his anger he tore out a clump of her hair. This man is never to be trusted with children, because of what Carl G. Jung calls the irritability of saints. When someone is a saint they no longer see their own faults but see them in others, project them onto others, which is why they get so mad at people.
1
The ancient Greek "philosophía" is often interpreted as meaning simply "the love of wisdom," but it really means "the characteristic conduct, or way of life, of one who loves wisdom," which is a bit different. In antiquity, "philósophoi" were much more than people whose job is to explain philosophical doctrines in liberal arts programs; rather, they were a special group of people whose lives reflected their commitment to what they believed and argued for regarding the cosmos, humanity and themselves.
In the case of Socrates in particular, Plato's tradition about his last days remains powerful and inspirational to this day: At his trial, Socrates gave a defense speech that did not so much refute the charges against him, or plead for mercy, but presented himself as an obedient servant of the gods, whose activity was of benefit to Athens; sitting in prison for a month before his scheduled execution, he had the opportunity to flee Athens and find refuge with friends elsewhere; on the day of his execution he calmly explained to his visitors why death was nothing to be feared, by way of consoling them.
If Ludwig Wittgenstein was indeed the greatest philsopher of the 20th century, it should be recognized that a part of his greatness was his admiration of Plato's Socrates as a moral example.
6
Although Bertrand Russell was Wittgenstein's mentor and one of the key individuals who persuaded Wittgenstein that he could become a philospher, his defintive synopsis, "A History of Western Philosophy," published in 1945 only a few years prior to Wittgenstein's death, unaccountably fails to make any mention of Wittgenstein's name or his contributions to philosophy. Petty professional jealousy and recognition, perhaps, that Wittgenstein was the greater philosopher?
1
“...No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other...
Real Frank Lloyd Wright
.....
“...No soul should ever be in a body or in anything. It should be of the body. Belonging to it. Body and soul should live together each the happier for the other...
AI Frank Lloyd Wright (enabled by style transfer)
.....
Conversely, having a God in us all as important as having a God of us all...
Then, there’s always a confessor around when you need one...
Especially since we may be heading for a crucifixion (or several) later this week – followed by resurrection on the Sunday talk shows...
PS
Someone at the NYT saw this whole thing coming, start to finish – kudos on your circumspection...
And understanding the need to take things – and ourselves – metaphorically, not literally...
XOYO
1
The paradigmatic heterotopia, the mirror, which you look into and say- “ That’s me over there, the virtual image, looking back at the real image.” perhaps functions as an instrument to allay guilt, and I would suggest, just like Foucault, Wittgenstein was guilty about his homosexuality, and both needed to make all sorts of high sounding excuses, say about the nobility of the ancient Greeks, or risking your life gloriously in war to become authentic, in order to absolve themselves in some way of that guilt. Just because Foucault was a psychiatrist, you don’t think he suffered from guilt? Ha, that’s a good one!
3
The idea of anyone being "the greatest philosopher" of a century is itself abhorrent; there are varieties of philosophers who address or emphasize different aspects, Wittgenstein became important as a philosopher of language; Edmund Husserl of phenomenology; Theodor Adorno as an philosopher of aesthetics; Herbert Marcuse as a Marxist, and so on; I myself agree that Freud is the most important philosopher of recent memory because his work on the unconscious throws the work of all previous philosophers into doubt. Wittgenstein appears to have still been of the generation of teachers who believed in corporeal punishment. He deserved to feel guilty.
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@michael roloff
I think a great philosopher is really a way to explain someone who was a great writer who wrote about thought. Both Marx and Kant were terrible writers who had many good things to say and found terrible ways to say them. As much as they are admired, they are only useful as material for other writers to mine. Its the writers we have to be wary of, people like Ayn Rand and Nietzsche who have a much greater effect than their thinking deserves.
1
There are many good people who have no burning guilt, to the chagrin of religious authorities and some philosophers.
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Wittgenstein's answer to "Why do philosophy?" is to "let the fly out of the flybottle."
He described philosophy as a ladder to climb to a higher level and then discarded because he thought philosophy was something to get over, to be "cured" of.
Whatever philosophy is -- a ladder appeals to me -- it certainly isn't the hammer some of those commenting use to flatten the opinions of others.
Time flies like an arrow but misses its mark if self-professed and credentialed philosophers mistake arrogance for wisdom and narrowness for depth.
Young Werther Ludwig Wittgenstein is not.
5
There's an underlying arrogance to holding oneself to such lofty standards while making exceptions and allowances for the shortcomings of others. He wanted to be perfect and that, in itself, is a kind of indulgence. It took me years to see that and it's an I grapple with still.
5
I've only read a bit of philosophy but Wittgenstein strikes me as entirely too self-involved to find any truth about the world, much less beauty.
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Wittgenstein led a tortured life, as many friends and colleagues observed. He tortured himself not only about his strength of will and desire to avoid self-deception but also about the deepest philosophical questions: the difference between sense and nonsense, the meaning of life, the meaning of good and evil, the cultural authority of science.
But just before he died, he said "Tell my friends I've had a wonderful life."
He could see further than most.
4
@Diogenes. He also had many homosexual affairs at a time when that was hardly accepted. Perhaps some of his guilt, shame and tortured disposition stemmed from that.
2
@Sparky Agreed: Wittgenstein was a classic "closet case." Much of the mystique surrounding him dissolves with that realization. Ray Monk's biography is both pretentious and misleading. "Duty of Genius"? Give me a break.
You give Wittgenstein great benefits of doubt by cherry picking his biography and remarks on it. I too wrote a book regarding Wittgenstein, in terms of abstract art and Pollock in particular: syntax is meaning re the all over canvases of Pollock’s best period. My research revealed a cold cruel manipulator with suicidal and homicidal impulses who blamed his homosexuality on the Jewish half of him, the feeble side as he called it. He was better at confessing other people’s flaws to them than to confronting himself. That he used his trust fund to educate his poorer Cambridge students is admirable but he also drove several to madness, one of them who survived being a teacher of mine in Iowa City — Gustav Bergmann. That Wittgenstein exercised the rigor he did in exploring language puts the mystical aspect of his thinking in higher relief than it might for other Positivists and therefore his need for God for instance who strikes me as more an aesthetic instance than a theological one. But to read of him in the Times is no less a treat for the dark times we live and out of which he came. We have to recommend Thomas Bernard’s The Correction, don’t you think?
7
The paradox: Wittgenstein's books are the kind that give philosophy a bad name -- deep investigations into obscure questions the answers to which don't seem to make any difference. And yet in his personal life he was pursuing a philosophy that wasn't about questions at all, but was all about making a difference. Can anything be said about that?
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@John Bergstrom
"deep investigations into obscure questions"...
I am now very wary of such an approach to difficult philosophers.
I found out in my own field (explaining to laypersons what art & museums are about) that stuff which I once considered obscure, or more precisely pointless, was such only because of the limitations of MY understanding.
We can certainly blame people like Wittgenstein (and most other German philosophers) for writing without consideration for us dummies. But let us blame what they wrote only if we understand it first.
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@Nestor Potkine So how do we evaluate the extent to which we "understand" anyone, particularly a philosopher, and more particularly a 'difficult' one. When I went off to college many decades ago, I wanted to major in philosophy. To consider, carefully and systematically, the important questions of human existence! But those we read were all all about grammar, so I quit. I now think I was misguided, that language is the medium through which we understand anything.
That's the extent of my public confessions. In my professional and personal writing, I try to be clear and avoid grammatical gymnastics. I want to be understood: I regard that as a desirable objective. But I realize that I have only limited control over the minds of others.
Honesty to oneself and others, consistency of thought and behavior; these are hobbies of self-involved, non-self-accepting people plagued by philosophical problems. People who do not acknowledge, do not have, philosophical problems are free from all that and can just get on with living life recognizing that perfection of intention as well as deed is not the only way to live and measure a meaningful life. What it comes down to is self-acceptance which Wittgenstein evidently did not have but which millions of people do. He looks to an observer like someone who devoted himself to navel-gazing and self-punishment disguised as a search for knowledge (a form of self-deception?), if he thought that was self-fulfilling, so be it. A contrary example could be our current president who is imperfect but evidently self-accepting; see all the good he's doing without cripplingly introspective perfectionism.
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@Ronald B. Duke
One must hope that you are being savagely ironical when you write of all the good your low IQ president is doing...
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@Nestor Potkine; No. We all wish we could have the polished elegance of William Buckley combined with the robust activism of Donald Trump, but God has granted only half our wish, the important half--Substance, but without Style. America has been needing for some time to face certain hard truths: Our allies are 'fair-weather', they love us only as long as we pay them to; The Chinese are getting away with mercantilist murder in their trade relations with us; the people on the left, yes, the Democrats, are only interested in sucking money from productive people to buy the votes of layabouts; and the business of America is business, by which I mean that we are really an economic, not a political society. Mr. Trump is perfectly clear-minded about all of this. You've heard the saying, "Cometh the hour, cometh the man", well, the hour has come and Mr. Trump is the man.
Dear Professor Beale,
Socrates: "All of philosophy is training for death."
Therefore, those that aspire to the rigors of philosophy must view the readings and the writings as necessary but not sufficient.
Certainly philosophy seeks to distill drops of wisdom from the ocean of science and glean lessons not immediately clear from superstition, but how can it keep its collective head out of the clouds if it ignores the flesh and blood of people at work and at play, in politics and at church, at war and in love?
Philosophy leavened by life leaves a philosopher with less to lie about, and leaves posterity more to think about.
Cordially,
S.A. Traina
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Only a professional academic could rank Wittgenstein as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Wittgenstein is one of many examples of how philosophy lost its way in the 20th century and became a succession of exercises in unhinged self contemplation. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem is arguably a better launching ground for new philosophy that the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The concept of "to thine own self be true" has been around since pre history and it is rediscovered by everyone who has occasion to think, but that does not lessen the importance or the problem involved in such an awareness. What modern thinkers are discovering is that the issue is not based in the problem of truthfulness but rather the concept of self, we are none of us one personality and we are always in the process of change. Confession may be good for part of the soul but courage is only tested by those who take a risk, a risk with their lives or their reputations or their happiness. Whatever the motivations of Ford and Kavanaugh the issue that will linger is who demonstrated courage and who withered when challenged. Kavanaugh seems to be a person who values comfort and the approval of his group above all and he is interviewing for a job that used to be considered the paragon of integrity. The court can be elevated or dishonored by what happens in these hearings and dishonor seems to be what is demanded by todays politics. But courage can still cauterize our national wounds.
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@Bobotheclown
Don Quixote was brave but he was mad. I stand with Socrates. Truth demands courage. It is sad that Wittgenstein never learned Judaism, tomorrow we read The Book of Jonah and the story of the king of Nineveh who miraculously understood truth.
Wittgenstein's genius was that despite his aristocratic Roman Catholic and Protestant upbringing he understood each day brings about a possibility of change which may or may not be to the better. I do not understand original sin but every day bring about the possibility of redemption through our own actions.
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@Memphrie et Moi
No such thing as original sin.
As to Wittgenstein "never learning Judaism", please remember that in spite of the apparent complexity of Judaism, it is just a rehash and remix of Bablyonian and Egyptian illusions.
Wittgenstein, like all well-educated people, certainly knew enough of Judaism, a not particularly useful lie.
Like all other religions...
I do not mean the following comment as a take-down, in any sense, of Wittgenstein's importance as a philosopher. I merely wish to say that in terms of enriching a person's life with an extraordinary sense of beauty and esthetic depth it is possible that we owe a greater debt to Ludwig's brother Paul, a brilliant pianist who lost his right arm In World War I. He commissioned Maurice Ravel's exquisite "Piano Concerto for the Left Hand," which has surely and deeply affected more people in the world than Ludwig's Tractatus. Of the Wittgensteins, I much more admire Paul, for his action in bringing forth that masterpiece.
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While I see the relevance to the Blasey accusation of Kavanaugh, my thoughts turned to, of all things, major league baseball. It is one thing to know you have done something wrong and the mind seeks calmer redeeming waters generated by confession; but a bigger problem is bias and discrimination, not just "wrong doing" which can be subtle and unconscious. I wonder, do the umpires in baseball that are forced to alter a decision in the face of forensic evidence deemed the "truth" become better citizens and judges? But more important to me is how many of those close calls are in fact caused by a bias. It would be a wonderful psycho-philo examination should MLB wish to create a study in which umpires are examined after the game when having suffered a reversal of decision ordered by the eyes in the skies. Is it good for their soul to be corrected? Do they feel calmer waters when the truth is told? How does embarrassment and humiliation factor into their judging abilities? Do the become better judges? Would Kavanaugh?
I would agree that it is easiest to lie to ourselves but it is the hardest to live with our own lies. Implicit in this is that one has a moral center.
5
@Steve,
It was Somerset Maugham who wrote that while one might on occasion lie to others, only a fool lies to himself. Remembering the first visit of a neighbor, and her declaration of 'I believe in absolute honesty' sounded like a confession; a confession to be honestly rude. Her elderly parent comes to stay at the inn for lack of space and declares 'I believe in reality'. It is astonishing how strangers feel it is their duty to impose their beliefs on another person.
True confessions may be the fashion of the day but this reader only shares them with the New York Times, and it is 'The Egoist' by George Meredith that comes to mind for his Willoughby is so 'perfect' that he is in a comical state of disbelief that he can be rejected by the fortunate object of his affection.
She has found him out. It is his lack of morality, his obtuse belief that he is incapable of an act of immorality that sends her fleeing.
Is it possible that every act is inherently an act in bad faith— especially the act of confession as a desperate attempt to escape the torture of self knowledge?
@Abdb
We are only as sick as our secrets.
1
Like most writing in the field of philosophy, I found this article was too long for the content it contained. (There is a max of 2 paragraphs of ideas here)
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@Edward I remember a novel where one running joke was that, every time one character came up with a pithy little saying, his friend would reduce it to an even cleverer and shorter little saying. It was pretty amusing. But yes, once someone has said something, it's always easy to see how it could have been said more concisely.
1
Interestingly this article appears on the eve of Yom Kipur, a time of reflection and repentance. There is much to ponder about “knowing thyself” and authenticity. Thanks!
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If the authentic self cannot ever be measured up to; then, maybe the idea of being authentic in one’s life is more of a self deception than being inauthentic.
4
HIstory shows that any philosopher worth his or her salt not only behaves monstrously, but does so with some regularity. So it could well be (without even knowing it) that W's real worry at the time he was confessing his once upon a time act of brutality followed by his once upon a time show of cowardice was that he hadn't been coming across to others as enough of a monster and thus ran the risk of being deemed irrelevant, if not being overlooked altogether.
"Believing he’d solved all the problems of philosophy..."
Obviously a delusion. He didn't even know what they were.
"...in Plato’s “Phaedrus.” Socrates...declares it “absurd to consider problems about other beings while I am still in ignorance about my own nature." This is the mythic Socrates--the ignoramus searching for the wisest man.
The comparison to Wittgenstein is the absurdity. "Monster" for disobeying the oracle?? Knocking out a girl student is child abuse! More like monster.
"Two thinkers he respected deeply probably influenced him: St. Augustine of Hippo and Tolstoy," Good grief--Bishop Augustine is a fraud--passing off Plato's idea of a mythical god as his own. Inventing "free will" to get that god off the hook for evil in the world.
"For “only death,” he also wrote in his war diaries, “gives life its meaning.” Adolescent nonsense. He is supposed a genius about meaning and use--not this.
"Confession can help remove obstacles standing in the way of our becoming our authentic selves. If it can do that for Wittgenstein, it may do the same for us."
(a) What's a self? "Self" translates "auto" --it is not categoremic; it needs a referent--as in auto-mobile--self moving. Do you mean "authentic person"?
(b) What's authentic? is it opposed to fraudulent?--as in liars cheats con men? Well "fessing up" may be a step to taking responsibility for fraud. And in one god story it gets you forgiven. But in real life it's not enough--regarding child abuse.
5
As an evangelical Christian, I simply HAVE to reply.
And this is NOT intended as an oblique, sneering censure of Wittgenstein. Oh no! Never that!
But my mind--as I read this intriguing article--went back immediately to the Old Testament. Jeremiah 17: 9--a verse particularly beloved by Presbyterians. And others!
"The heart," it tells us--"the heart is DECEITFUL above all things. . . . .
". . .and DESPERATELY wicked. Who can know it?
"I, the Lord KNOW the heart--I TRY the reins. . . . ."
I feel certain--with that desperate, unquenchable sincerity that was a hallmark of this man--
--that Wittgenstein must have come to recognize this himself. IN himself.
We search and search our own hearts. Layer after layer we pull back. We find hidden depths in the deepest deeps. The quest goes on. And on. And on.
BUT--
--we CANNOT know ourselves as Almighty God knows us. It CANNOT be--but there will be some tiny shred of hypocrisy, some slight turning from the light, some slight shrinking from the surgeon's scalpel.
Which is why that New Testament verse should strike a chill--even to the most casual, indifferent heart.
"It is appointed once to man to die--and after that, the judgment."
We Christians--and that would include Professor Anscombe (a devout Catholic)--we Christians throw ourselves, our sins, our deceptions--
--upon the Person of Jesus Christ.
Who knows all.
Who forgives all.
Praise the Lord!
@Susan Fitzwater
I do respect your beliefs. It must be acknowledged that philosophy opens situations and thoughts and feelings - and religion closes them down to certainty.
There are two spirals here; the spiral of philosophy {literally 'love of knowledge'} expands ever outwards, and the spiral of religion spirals inward so that the answer to every inquiry becomes "God".
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@Susan Fitzwater Oh, please.
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@Susan Fitzwater
To me, a devout nonbeliever, this seems just more self-deception.
5
As Jews turn our attention toward the approach of Yom Kippur, it's worth noting Ludwig Wittgenstein's inward obsessions and passion for confession without equal emphasis on atonement.
Wittgenstein's dry mathematical philosophy purposefully excludes any human factors that might force us to look outward and achieve meaningful healing of the world.
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@nero Witt's philosophy is "mathematical"? Please explain.
What a timely Op-ed. We need to begin all over again and too many refuse to look in the mirror. I am 70 and everyday is a new beginning and tonight confession is prelude to a new beginning. Despite the turmoil Wittgenstein was a Jew in a nonJewish Universe.
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Why is courage a necessary condition for getting out of self-deception? I don't follow the reasoning.
I can see how confession can be instrumental in bringing about self-honesty, but I don't see why it's necessary. Somebody could realize that they've done something bad without acknowledging it publicly. Confession to others is a social act, one that informs others and can bring about reconciliation. I don't know why the analysis of this should revolve around self-deception or the elimination of it.
p.s. I'm sorry, but I just think this is a lot of convoluted nonsense. If Wittgenstein really struck those kids and denied it, I think he knew that he struck them and that it was wrong. He just didn't want to admit it. Where does self-deception come in?
3
@Mark Wittgenstein apparently felt a need to confess to others about that one episode in his life -- I'm sure he would agree with you that there were many things he knew about himself, that it was unnecessary for anyone else to know. Logically, he could have been honest with himself about that episode also, even if his Russian teacher hadn't been home to confess to. But the point is that, as is suggested at the end of the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, there is a whole world of life beyond the realm of logic. There is no need to call it "convoluted nonsense", even if you don't understand it at this point.
" 'Nothing is so difficult', Wittgenstein wrote in 1938, 'as not deceiving oneself.' "
This is such a powerful and stark observation. Self-deception really is a primary means for navigating this life. The brutal truths that unchecked honesty would impose upon our psyches would essentially make life an unappealing prospect.
2
The video of my play, Freud Meets Wittgenstein, was just posted to YouTube a week ago. The play focuses both Freud's analysis of Wittgenstein's psychology and Wittgenstein's critique of scientism. It includes a scene of Wittgenstein years after the event seeking the forgiveness from the father of the boy he struck. Beale neglected to note that for Wittgenstein atonement as well as confession was an imperative.
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Confession in secret to a priest, a psychoanalyst. or a discreet friend provides personal solace. That's why some cultures institutionalize it. And it's useful, personally and socially, not to have people walking around feeling unbearable guilt.
But public rituals of repentance and self-humiliation also serve useful purposes. Agreeing with HP's comment below, I don't think that secret confession alone answers to the moral problem when you have hurt or wronged someone. How about a humble public apology to the individual (or next of kin)? And, if the consequences of the harm inflicted were severe, even accepting some responsibility for compensation.
Otherwise, it's easy for contrition to reflect one's "willful" desire to be purer-than-thou without loss of status, and without real humility.
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@jcb
Confession has been used, and is used today, to get rid of guilt, and do wrong again.
2
Oddly, Heidegger's _Being and Time_ (well: _Sein und Zeit_) seems to be absent from the German Wittgenstein's life, precisely during the era of existential thinking about authenticity and facing potentials of being that Wittgenstein struggles to articulate; and which made thinkinf about existence such a hallmark of European thought.
Heidegger's work led to several trends in psychotherapy, which Wittgenstein's rather blind struggles also intimate.
But philosophy is NOT basically a therapeutic (though Wittgenstein caused a lot of attention to the emancipatory potentials of linguistic analysis). Philosophy was originally a notion of higher education. Philosophy became the specialty of conceptual inquiry, thanks in part to Wittgenstein, but also thanks to many others.
Wittgenstein is a precursor of a marriage between humanistic psychology (now “positive psychology”), developmental psychotherapeutics (e.g., C. G. Jung)—beyond medicalized psychoanalysis—and philosophical psychology.
For Wittgenstein to serve in WWI shows courage in the face of mortal danger but for him to lie about striking a child in a sudden loss of control was a cowardly act. His inability to take responsibility for years shows a ego which was too insecure to admit to that wrongful act and a conscience too weak to make him want to remedy the harm done to the child. In the end, Wittgenstein betrayed himself and belied his self mastery under stress, and that he was content to confess it to relieve his own discomfort not to confront his own transgression against moral conduct.
The lesson to be learned is that even the most erudite and adept intellectual can screw up.
12
What did Wittgenstein mean by 'authentic" (or 'authenticity')?
What do we mean them? Pretty clearly, we mean 'true.'
But it seems we also mean 'pure,' 'uncontaminated,' 'unadulterated,' and 'essential' (even 'profoundly essential'). If so, surely that's an ideal.
And, in the West, it's an ideal that's hardly unconnected from another ideal--that of the individual (or individuality).
I wonder if it's possible to distinguish between an 'authentic' self and a self that sets itself apart, or, by implication, somehow is set apart (from everything around it).
Which leads me to say this: Let's not get hung up with whether authenticity is achievable, or even a particularly valid goal.
It seems Wittgenstein (or his life, at any rate) suggests a potentially more useful and urgent aspiration: self-transformation.
To be more specific, I mean self-transformation, not for the sake of authenticity (as an end goal), but, rather, using the ideal of authenticity as a guide--the ultimate end goal being the ability to be at ease with one's own conscience and one's own self (impure as that self may be).
Might Wittgenstein himself have been more interested in conscience and self-forgiveness than he was in authenticity? I don't know. But that's what resonates with me.
2
"Wittgenstein's Vienna" by Janik and Toulmin is an excellent
background story about Wittgenstein and his family. They were
one of the wealthiest families in Europe and Wittgenstein, himself, gave up a fortune.
2
For readers of this statement who might wish a modern Christian perspective on the question of confession--and repentance--I suggest two short essays by the Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One is "Temptation," which is appended to the Harper Touchstone edition of "Creation and Fall." The other is Bonhoeffer's more well-known, "Life Together," where he examines the conditions of life in Christian community. I would add a statement that my own Mother and I discussed about someone we knew who was trying to deal with the torment of a near-suicidal despair for reasons much like those adumbrated herein. We agreed that "Nobody needs the grace of God more than those who least deserve it." It is worth saying in this connection that this is a paradox that Bonhoeffer declared impossible to grasp by mere "thinking." To him, God really exists and God really loves us all, just because we are all in some sense trapped by our own inability to transcend our own predicament, which includes the kind of psychological torment that Wittgenstein obviously inflicted on himself.
2
@David A. Lee
Who needs Christian hair-splitting ?
If the premise (god exists) is already wrong, what value can conclusions have ?
It bothers me that I often find it difficult to distinguish within myself between conscience pangs and the pain of confronting something that contradicts my preferred self-image. (I think conscience and vanity are real.) I haven’t come up with a reliable method for telling the difference, but this question I have for myself seems relevant here.
On the flip side of living in the world as a social being, I once came across the idea that patiently enduring the negative manifestations of others towards oneself is one path to self-perfection. I tried when young to follow the seemingly related injunction “turn the other cheek,” but it turns out that if as a result you store up a continually seething rage and become self-protective in your dealings with others then you’re doing it wrong. It does seem that attempting instead to patiently endure the negative manifestations of others towards oneself can be part of a way to unwind and decrystallize some of the physical and hopefully also the emotional consequences of turning the other cheek without really knowing how to make that work out within oneself.
1
@Jack I would suggest you put your ugliest self up to your internal mirror. As for turning the other cheek, the most cherished of historical moments for me, it would have to be completely heartfelt. Otherwise it's an exercise in self value, I suspect. It requires courage the likes of which few of us possess. But it's value is the largest emotional quality there is.
1
But what is the self? This is the central question of human life, and thus necessarily of psychology and philosophy. In the main, if one is interested in this question for oneself, one has to go to the meditation literature. I recommend Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Toni Packer, and (who is alive now), Mooji. Also check out the Buddha at the Gas Pump website for interviews with "teachers" from many different perspectives from around the world.
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@Radical Inquiry
I suspect that neurological research may prove way more radical than Buddhist twaddle.
1
Many of the things people feel bad about having done are in the context of intense, complicated relationships and situations at home or work. The idea that one is going to enter into these situations to confess and make amends and not have the confession and amend-making used to harm you is naive.
It's dangerous to confess to anything, especially in this electronic era.
I find it odd that none of the commenters have considered this very practical dimension. Do you mean we should disregard it?
7
@K It is more important to confess to one's self perhaps. Admit to one's self the action was mistaken, try to understand why one committed the act, and make refraining from doing it again one's goal. Or, if the greater good would be served by confessing publicly, then real courage would require such a public confession regardless of the consequences.
6
@K
You are willing to admit to mistakes but in a way that does not involve strangers knowing about your mistakes.
@K
You are very right to point out that the Internet and social media have completed changed the game about confession.
I find it comforting that so many readers, in sharply condemning Wittgenstein, are implicitly claiming that they themselves have held and observed higher standards.
So nice! (smile).
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@Ludwig
Pythagoras has been credited to coin the Greek word philosophy, which means love of wisdom.
Our laymen/women philosophers here need a bit of catching up, including in mathematics which has a strong relationship not only with philosophy but music as well.
Wittgenstein himself was studying mathematics and mathematical thought, while as a youngster Brahms was visiting his parents and Ravel composed a piano concerto for one arm after one of his brothers had lost an arm in WWI.
3
@Ludwig After twenty stones had hit the woman, Jesus turned around and said, "Isn't it wonderful that there are twenty people here without sin?" (smile)
1
@Sarah Of course Witt studied mathematics. People either don't know or have forgotten that Witt originally trained to be an engineer. Isn't that what drew him to Manchester after Berlin?
Wittgenstein is described here as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century and one of his pupils, Anscombe as the greatest philosopher of her generation. A lot of greatness here! Many would not agree: Wittgenstein's supervisor, mentor, friend and critic, Bertrand Russell has long since been held as the most important philosopher of the 20th century for his overwhelming importance in the fields of logic, computing and moral philosophy. While it may have been courageous of Wittgenstein to fight in WW!, Russell instead suffered jail in his objections to the senseless slaughter of the war, as well his objections to other stupid wars like the Vietnam war.
Also Wittgenstein's original fame was very much due to Russell's promotion of his ideas and his book on Logical Atomism which formalized the notions in the Tractatus. In fact it is hard to believe the thesis would have ever reached completion without Russell's effort supporting Wittgenstein while he was regarded as an enemy of Britain and which awarded him his doctorate.
20
@Michael Russell wrote "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy" while in jail for conscientious objection to WW1.
As for Wittgenstein's philosophy, see Michael Frayn and/or Jerry Fodor on Wittgenstein and fog-like sensations.
@Michael
In my opinion Martin Heidegger was the greatest philosopher of the 20th century - but Ludwig Wittgenstein was not far behind him. Bertrand Russell wasn't close to being in their league - but he was a great man. It requires atypical humility to recognise that your student is more gifted than you and to support them in their work.
". . . it was his dishonesty rather than his violence that most burdened his conscience." Not the crime but the coverup? Hmmm, where have I heard THAT before?
10
It is instructive that Anscombe notes that she doubts anyone understood Wittgenstein and that does not bode well for the claim that he is the greatest philosopher of the 20th century since his later work both dismisses his earlier comprehensible work and consists mainly of short musings that he wrote for the rest of his life, now contained in the Blue Notebooks. Comprehensibility should be the main characteristic of a philosopher, otherwise he is indistinguishable from a mystic.
8
@Michael, why must all philosophers be distinguished from all mystics? There seem to be many borderline thinkers, e.g., Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
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A very nice article (and book). This essay is a bit in the flavor of Jim Miller's "Examined Lives" which refreshingly looks at several philosopher's actual personal contours, and not just their words. I'm not sure Wittgenstein has much to say, or demonstrate, concerning a kind if secular moral philosophy, but he did have to manage his own life, which makes all of us "philosophers" at least in that regard. As for Socrates (or that is, as relayed by Plato), one might more profitably consult Aristotle--if ancient classical is to your liking--especially the Nichomachean Ethics. A good article in the NYT. Keep them coming. Regards.
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@Matt Andersson
I wish this article had been about Aristotle. The more time and thinkers confront these ago old problems the more Aristotle stands as the archaic rock pointing the way that no one follows.
What he did was react instinctively with a self preservation reaction without any thinking at all. It made a mockery of his great pride as a person with total rational control of himself and his acts. His unconscious showed him up as someone who did not control himself as he expected. If he felt bad about doing wrong he’d have admitted it soon afterwards.
5
There was an article recently about how the most "successful" people, at least as measured by material success, were the most capable of self-deception. Awareness is an albatross hanging around our necks. As Schopenhauer said “He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all clocks in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows the right time; what use is that to him?”
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@stan continople
I'll take the albatross, please. The useless awareness. If you aren't running from awareness, you don't need the "success."
Obsessive guilt and shame is just another form of ego. We bludgeon ourselves endlessly for being human, magnify our significance about our effect on others. In reality, we should do our best, make restitution when necessary, and then let it go. No one is as important as they think they are.
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@Tom J. Excellent comment! The narcissism involved in seeking perfection is extraordinary. A simple, heartfelt apology coupled with an earnest commitment to do better is preferable to the histrionic grandstanding of overtly dramatic gestures.
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Very Buddhist of him.
I'm not familiar with Wittgenstein's writings, so take this all with a grain of salt...
For us Jews, it's said that on Rosh Hashanah God makes a decree as to one's life for the coming year, and on Yom Kippur the determination is sealed. And during the 10 days between the holidays, three things can modify God's decree: teshuvah (repentance, literally "turning"), tefillah (prayer) and tzedakah (often translated as charity, but literally "justice").
Wittgenstein's confession emphasizes repentance, turning away from the bad deed he did. This is great. But is he doing tzedakah? Has justice been done in this situation? He has not apologized for the boy (or seemingly tried to apologize directly) for striking him. He has not been held accountable by the school.
What good is teshuvah without tzedakah? If one turns away from their bad action, perhaps they have made themselves better for the next time, but have they healed, or tried to heal, the wounds they have caused to others?
On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, it's said that God can forgive the sins against Him, but only another person can forgive sins against them. God cannot forgive those. That's where Wittgenstein's focus on himself, and the nature of his confession, strikes me as the easy way out: the hardest work is holding one's self accountable to the very people we've harmed, and only then is true justice done.
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@David G So what should Israel do?
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@David G
Why do you believe in all those illusions ?
@Nestor Potkine
You assume that I believe in their literal truth. I do not. I use them as a way to guide my own thoughts about how to act as a moral individual, and think about the different aspects of human moral behavior. You don’t have to believe in the existence of God to recognize that the sages who wrote these prayers thought deeply and seriously about the human condition, and use their thoughts to guide your own, and help provide a framework for evaluating human behavior (as I’ve done above).
I've been hoping for many years that the philosophers could 'solve' the Death Problem philosophically. I'm tired of waiting.
The same can be said of the medical profession and its 'Death Problem'.
I guess I'll just keep praying in my local Catholic Church.
Or am I missing something here?
I
This was a really great article and a fascinating read. I'm glad the Times posted it. In Alexander Waugh's wonderful book "The House of Wittgenstein" one of the few things I didn't care for was the dismissal of Ludwig's theories as convoluted and incomprehensible. Some say that of Theodor Adorno as well, but I find Adorno much more accessible than Ludwig W. - though I have no doubt of old Wittgenstein's brilliance and that he made an enormous contribution to philosophy.
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After reading Monk's bio of Wittgenstein year ago, I came away thinking that he was both a genius and a creep. The larger question, in my view, is if his confession ended his predilection for whacking young children into unconsciousness. If not, confession becomes just another cover for the endless ways we deceive ourselves.
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@RMW: One or possibly two incidents do not a predilection make. Do you have other evidence?
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The confession was given in England over a decade after he had abandoned his career as a primary school teacher in Austria
because he had knocked Haidbauer unconscious by accident.
The headmaster didn't want him to leave.
" . . . predilection . . . " ? "for whacking young children into unconsciousness." ??
My memory of Monk's account of L.W.'s schoolteaching years was that if any abusive behavior could be described as a "predilection," it would be his pulling the hair of female students who answered questions incorrectly. Ear-boxing girls and boys was apparently another of his predilections.
I have just now been revisiting Monk's account of those years. Here's one example: " . . . Hermine, had so often been on the wrong side of Wittgenstein's temper, and had once been hit so hard that she bled behind the ears."
His physical abuse was bad enough. We don't need to mischaracterize his repeated instances of hair-pulling and ear-boxing (yes, horribly, even to the point of bleeding) as "whacking young children into unconsciousness."
The answer to your question is: no. What ended his ability to act on his predilection for physically abusing students was that he removed himself (ten years before the confession in Cambridge about lying about another incident) from primary school teaching after the Haidbauer incident. He returned eventually to having older students who suffered his intellectual brain-boxing, but would have poleaxed him had he touched them with violence.
@Paul Connah, also, my readings have suggested the possibility that boxing the ears was fairly usual in German and Austrian schools 100 years ago, so it wasn't only Wittgenstein. I cannot say this with authority, though.
If I understand the article, Wittgenstein viewed confession as a cathartic experience that enabled him to strengthen his will and become more authentic. Years ago when I regularly went to church, a general confession was said before the consecration during Mass. Over time I came to find this exercise hollow. Reading St. Augustine’s “Confessions” as a young student, I was turned off by his constant feeling of guilt for what he had done or had failed to do. He had abandoned the mother of his child at the urging of his own mother Monica, a Christian, and became a religious leader. His writings exerted tremendous influence on many generations of Christians for better and for worse.
In her film “Triumph of the Will” Leni Riefenstahl sought to depict Hitler as a champion of will power. In his speeches he admonished Germans not to be satisfied with their current state but to strive to overcome the deprivations that the Versailles peace settlement had placed upon them and their country. The admonition – Stronger than fate is the will that overcomes it – inspired millions of Germans and others in the interwar period. It proved to be a hollow admonition. In the end Hitler committed suicide rather than face the logical consequences of his inhuman policies. His “will power” had destroyed millions of people across Europe.
We must ask whether a quest for “authenticity” is more human than helping others to survive and flourish. In the end it may be a fool’s quest that harms others.
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@bkbyers
Hitler was not a thinker he was a manipulator and a very able one. But the rational mistakes he made could have been recognized by any undergraduate in any discipline studying decision making. He knew the latest weapons down to their plans and specifications but he could not make heads or tales of basic strategic concepts nor of the working of modern states. His belief in the power of will was just plain magical thinking even though it worked to mesmerize a nation. When all his failures culminated n defeat at war, his reaction was to order the self destruction of Germany. A study of Hitler belongs in history and social psychology not philosophy.
So are we talking about Kavanaugh here?
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I thought no one would bring it up.
@Matthew
Yes. Absolutely.
He grew up in one of the richest families in Europe. Three of his 4 brothers committed suicide. He toyed with the idea numerous times himself. He often beat school children and during WW II, while serving as a hospital orderly, often suggested to patients they not take their prescribed medication.
Genius, yes. Role model, not even close.
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GEM Anscombe the greatest philosopher of her generation??? How about Quine, Rawls, Austin... And that's not even counting Continental figures like Adorno.
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@Dr. J.
You are - of course - correct. Her primary claim to fame was being trusted by Wittgenstein so that she was permitted to translate his work.
Although in fairness, some see her original work as brilliant but it never seemed that way to me
@Dr. J. Not to mention Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, who admired Russell enormously and had no use for Witt (nor he for him).
“In Vermischte Bemerkungen Wittgenstein writes that philosophy’s difficulty lies ‘With the Will, rather than With the intellect.’” The idea that you can storm the citadel of knowledge through strength of will is an old fable of metaphysics that, indeed, goes back to Plato, or Socrates. (Read the Crito, where Socrates sacrifices himself to the city’s elders. He disappoints his friends, but secures his reputation as our culture’s first martyr to “science.”) Augustine’s sweaty Confessions glow with pride at the strength of his own will. Nietzsche delighted in the irony of self-confession, which he considered the highest expression of the Will to Power. Foucault spent his later career working on a book about Western “confessional technology,” a disciplined attempt to dredge up secrets of the soul so they can be integrated in surveillance society. Ailing societies, like Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, stage show trials with rituals of accusation and self-confession as a fake substitute for the elusive quality of truth. Meanwhile humble thinkers—like Aristotle or Aquinas—simply get down to work.
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@Stephen Hoffman
I have no idea why you would think that Socrates sacrificed himself for science
Nietzsche toyed with a will to power but it was never a mature doctrine and he considered self-confession as useless priest-like action (GofM) next to knowing yourself - "what does your conscience say - you should become who you are"
NYT: More like this. We're ready for it.
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From Socrates to Wittgenstein, knowing oneself including confession of flaws was key to knowing anything about anyone. Many psychiatrists do the same, continuing in treatment of themselves in order to be able to help others.
In our current season of lies, constant lies, and payback, we have lost this. It is losing ourselves. It is losing our basic ability to understand what is really happening around us.
We can't know. We don't even want to know. We are too involved for that.
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We have the Bill of Rights. Here's my take on what might be called the Bill of Responsibilities. We are responsible for telling the truth to ourselves, for being good to other people, and for promoting the beauty of the earth.
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@Jeff Cox
Bravo !
Mr. Beale's essay is important because many newspaper readers will become familiar with Wittgenstein.
Now whether those readers, and myself, will ever understand his philosophical thinking is quite another matter.
I question whether many members of the GOP Congress have read Wittgenstein or would understand his thinking. Just a guess here.
Most are too busy watching their DVR's of Fox in the Morning.
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No one sees the total self but the energy that is within us, be it called God or Abba or any number of other names. This energy is for self fulfillment which can only come ultimately in life (in reality) in contact with others who keep us from ourselves so that we can then maybe have a chance to be honest with ourselves. We need this honesty with ourselves for it is the means through which we see the world - the details into the grander views. More honesty, less distractions to see it(whatever it is) in its fullness which we can call love.The latter is totally based on how we learn to be honest with ourselves. To the extent we are is the extent to which we can understand anything which means in its fullest glory of the goods and the bads combining to make us who we are and will be, here in this reality and then beyond. Thank-you for your article.
2
Wittgenstein was born into a very rich family, and takes up a rich kid's concern. Confession, self awareness, on Yom Kippur. Is a human baby worth the plastic pampers the do not decay in landfills, the trips by plane that pollute the stratosphere?, the waste we produce when we are rich enough with leisure enough to read this column? are my actions right? Is my family doing well? My neighbors? My state? My country? My religion? My secular pursuits? We are all more sinning than sinned against. Myself included. A path forward that includes consideration of others and the planet please.
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@4Average Joe
If God existed, he would not let us savage the planet.
That said, let's take that path you recommend.
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Authenticity is an attempt at a true representation. There was a spate of news anchors( like Anderson Cooper) who wanted the public to know of their authenticity. Not as a confession but as a buzz word. If one had to confess their deepest held secrets that would harm their personal image they have cultivated. One can see in politics that finding others secrets and hiding ones own is part of the political battle. With Wittgenstein, who denied metaphysics a place in philosophy, authenticity is ones reality the rest is a pose.
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The truth is what we need these days more than anything else. People know what the truth is, but they don’t have the courage to say it. Or they tell lies to themselves about why the truth cannot be told.
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"Socrates admits he has failed to obey the Delphic injunction to know his own self": inaccurate. What Socrates says (Phaedrus 229e) is "I am not yet able to, in accordance with the Delphic maxim, know myself". Socrates is never not obeying the injunction; he simply has not fulfilled it: he probably doesn't think perfect self-knowledge is possible, and accepts that the quest is endless.
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@ulix
Nitpicking.
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@KS
Also know as: philosophy.
This is a well trod path best traversed by Lionel Trilling in Sincerity and Authenticity. Trilling recognized the battle between self and self-in-the-world brilliantly.
Unfortunately, his conclusion as I read him is that there is no reconciliation between the two - just a pitched battle and then we die.
This is much closer to Nietzsche and Socrates than it appears to be to Wittgenstein - which makes sense to me.
You want the greatest philosopher-psychologist read Nietzsche and not the second-best
Here is the original NYT review
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/02/04/archives/sincerity-and-authenticity-m...
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I know nothing of 20th century philosophy but self-examination is greatly facilitated by asking others for honest feedback. It takes a certain amount of courage to do that, but the eyes of others can be much more efficient and accurate lenses than one's own.
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And what if confession does not bring relief enough? What of those for whom even the smallest events, errors, transgressions of "Christmases Past" continue to haunt the personal No Man's Land of conscience -- with Socratic self-awareness but without relief from what can be "monstrous" regret? Perhaps one can dedicate the self to Good Works, and yet there may not be Good Works enough to overcome the memories, the wracking dreams where no escape seems possible.
While one may become "a different person," Self-Awareness tags along as a reminder of how much the way we were is still a part of who we have become.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
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@Doug Giebel
I take Beale's point to be that Wittgenstein did not seek relief. He would confess as a practice toward self-knowledge, whether it soothed or disturbed.
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@Doug Giebel
I once asked a school psychologist why, when we are awake in the night, can’t we obsess on the good things we have done in life instead of obsessing on the transgressions and moments of unkindness. He said that if we obsess on the good things that would be called “narcissism.” I am still not convinced, but still obsess on the negative.
1
@Mary Kovis Watson
MARY! of Opheim.
Please get in touch.
dougcatz(at)itstriangle(dotcom)
In this postmodern era, I wonder if such self-introspection and authenticity is possible?
This question I believe applies not only to philosophy and philosophers, but also in the lives of the average individual living today.
With the likes of 'fake news' found in the legacy media, manipulated newsfeeds on Facebook, and with fake followers who voice inauthentic opinions on Twitter. Can anyone really say that they understand the world they live in?
Or what about the near fanatical demands that the ideologues of the Left and Right demand in todays political environment? If one becomes simply a devote follower, without questioning the rigid demands of ideology, is it even possible to begin a journey of self-introspection?
In Wittgenstein's time, the world around him valued things like courage, honesty, Truth and other like minded principles. It was the environment around him that gave foundation to the idea of authenticity.
But with modernism collapsing all around us on every level that society is built upon - from the political to the intellectual. Any serious attempt to truly define oneself becomes almost impossible with the barriers that today's society places in front of all of us.
Now, I am not saying such a journey of self-improvement, the likes of which Professor Beale just described is not possible.
I just think that anyone who wishes to attempt such an adventure today, will have to create a much different path than the one described here.
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@The Peasant Philosopher
I disagree. I think that Wittgenstein's intended practice of earnest authenticity is just what is needed in these post-modern times. Same as it ever was.
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@The Peasant Philosopher
Our society idealizes superficiality, falseness, predictability, and many other dubious qualities. But when our standards were higher they were widely interpreted in superficial and self-serving ways. One had to work one's way to a deeper understanding of things that were trivialized in the status quo. Today, just to ask probing questions is to put yourself outside social norms, which might be an easier starting point.
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@The Peasant Philosopher
The Roaring Twenties were at least as superficial as the current feckless epoch.
Let's get to work.
1