An Encounter with Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Student's Journey into Philosophy, Study Guides, Projects, Research of English Language

Download An Encounter with Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Student's Journey into Philosophy and more Study Guides, Projects, Research English Language in PDF only on Docsity! Benjamin Gustafsson 603A Bump 10/27/05 On the Meaning of Certain Words It was upon returning to Yale’s campus now as a student of another alma mater that I experienced an extraordinary glimpse into an all-at-once strange and familiar world. For many years it had been my dream to carry on my scholarly ambitions by looking outward from Yale’s campus as an insider under the eclectic facade of Gothic cobblestone towers with archaic names like Saybrook and Timothy Dwight. These names were the signposts along the road to a great destiny. With their help I would discover, effortlessly, the meaning of the words success, prestige and happiness. A plaintive cry from a group of tourists taking snap-shots around a small copper statue of a proud and utterly displaced Isaac Newton, far from his native England, brought me back to the present moment. I shuddered briefly from the cool air. On this September morning as I searched for my friend, Xiaoxuan, the Valedictorian of our magnet high school who had, for her extraordinary efforts, received the prize of a scholarship to Yale, my mind was full of conflicting feelings. Not even the clean, crisp autumn air could diffuse this dyspeptic fog that swirled around and within me. I kept wondering if the students who were being inducted into Yale’s secret societies would discover that I was an outsider – someone not suited for these manicured lawns. 1 Fig 2: Carothers Dormitory Fig 1: Students gather on Yale’s Old Campus Hoping to build some primitive fortification against this ubiquitous siege of self- destructive thinking, I searched for entrenching notions of belonging to my new college community. Where was Xiaoxuan, I asked myself nervously? She had undoubtedly been delayed on some important errand. I wanted desperately to be home in our “quad.” There I would walk with my friends among the comforting limestone buildings, where Spanish architecture mixed playfully with the jutting angles of modern industrial structures. At the heart of our “40 acres,” an awesome obelisk of ancient learning watches over us. With a warm orange glow that blends imperceptibly with the humid night air, this monument gently reminds us that knowing the truth will set us free. Soon my mind wandered to a foggy old greenhouse and rested at a green turtle pond full of algae, whose inhabitants care little for what lies beyond its stony banks. I imagined myself brewing dark, warm cups of Andersons’ coffee with my perpetually cheerful friend Michael. Through endless nights we confronted the darkness of our undefined destinies and celebrated our starving ambitions at the break of dawn. We smiled inwardly at our grandiloquence, and studied each other cautiously for signs of skepticism. Had we not lain to rest our hopelessness? Had we not, together, given countless eulogies to 2 Fig 3: The Harry Ransom Center Fig 4: The University of Texas Tower lit up at night which fell upon the floor through the rectangular windows facing the court [4]. This place was utterly silent. Only my quiet footsteps could be heard as I cautiously examined the room. My nerves began to settle and a sense of curiosity arose within me. At last I arrived at a big wooden door behind which I heard the scrambling of chairs and low voices. Summoning my courage I opened the door and found a group of fifteen students packed tightly in an “austerely furnished” living room [5]. The room’s walls were barren, devoid of any “ornaments, paintings or photographs.” An extraordinary sense of order and cleanliness contrasted sharply with the mass of students surrounding a surprisingly young looking man [6]. A “lean and brown” face looked up beneath a head of curly brown hair [7]. Upon my appearance in the room he cast a scornful look and said coldly “my lectures are not for tourists” [8]. He spoke in a high, clear British, punctured occasionally by germanisms. As I looked back at him, startled, someone whispered, “Wittgenstein expects all students to attend at least six lectures so that we contribute to the dialogue.” After a few silent moments I cautiously answered. “I have to tell you that I am not, in fact, a student here at Trinity College. In all honesty I believe that I should not yet be born for another fifty-six years, and even then it will be far away in the American southwest.” Neither the man they called Wittgenstein nor the other students seemed disturbed by this statement. A few smiled, as though I had purchased myself a place among them with this clever “excuse” and the man at the center of 5 Fig 6: A Sketch of Ludwig Wittgenstein Fig 7: A bridge over the river Cam the room pointed toward a chair in the corner of the room. Slowly and with a pounding heart, I began to realize that I might somehow be in the presence of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great logician and philosopher, who was touted by Bertrand Russell as the reconciler of all western philosophy. And he had done this not just once, but twice! First, with the publication the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein introduced the use of the “truth table” to elucidate the “theory of truth functions” and the concept of “language as a picture of reality” [9]. Then again, almost twenty years later, when he repudiated his earlier work in his far more esoteric Philosophical Investigations. In the later work, Wittgenstein jettisoned the “correspondence theory of truth” (the theory that a proposition “pictures” or “corresponds” with facts) in favor of a more anthropological approach, which dissolves philosophical problems by painstakingly imagining and examining “language games,” in which concepts such as “belief,” “knowledge” and “truth” arise quite naturally in the context of everyday life or quite strangely and paradoxically in the context of philosophical discussion. Since his death in 1951 little new ground had been broken in western philosophy as students who sided with “the early” and those who sided with “the late” Wittgenstein argued among themselves [10]. I had often thought of Wittgenstein as role model because he had approached philosophy with such a unique perspective and tireless desire to solve problems thoroughly. Suddenly, without introduction he began to speak. “An Austrian general said to someone: ‘I shall think of you after my death, if that should be possible.’ We can imagine one group who would find this ludicrous, another who wouldn’t” [11]. At the present moment I fell decidedly among the latter group. He continued. “When we talk about a ‘belief’ during a discussion of the ‘supernatural’ we are no longer using the word as we 6 would in scientific or rational conversation. In a conversation about an experiment we may say that we believe that the conclusion supports our hypothesis. This kind of ‘belief’ is graduated on a scale of probability. In the context of the supernatural we accept the term ‘belief’ to mean something absolute. If a man were to draw a scribbled image on a paper and call this ‘death’ we would not ask him how firmly he believed that this image was in fact death.” [12] Here he seemed to grin inwardly at his own analogy. Someone among the students chuckled to which he shouted, “No, no; I’m serious!” [13] In silence, we all wiped the smiles off our faces. “One might then say that this ‘belief’ is unreasonable. I would not say this. I would never call such an argument reasonable either – meaning they don’t use reason here.” [14] Someone began to ask a question to which, Wittgenstein simply waved him off with his hand [15]. The room fell into what seemed to me an uneasy silence, but to which the students reacted quite calmly, simply waiting for him to continue. As I watched the heavy lines that drew themselves across his forehead, I “knew that [I] was in the presence of extreme seriousness, absorption, and force of intellect” [16]. Sitting quietly I became aware again of my surroundings. As a student I had become conditioned to listening to lectures that wandered through planes of solitary esoteric thought. Out of habit I found it quite natural to listen to what would otherwise have seemed an enormously remote and abstract discussion. Even so, I became aware that this “lecture” was very different from those I had attended at The University of Texas. It seemed as though this enormous intellect was reasoning out his argument here amongst his peers – conducting research. The only thing that seems to have made such an approach possible “was a vast amount of thinking and writing about all the problems under discussion” for he used no notes whatsoever [17]. I spoke quietly to myself, 7 He looked up at the night sky and pointed at the stars that made up Cassiopeia and said that “it was a ‘W and that it meant Wittgenstein.” I told him that it was a ‘B’ for Benjamin. He “gravely assured me that I was wrong” [24]. I smiled at him but he appeared completely serious. I could hear the water running along the banks of the Cam. Wittgenstein appeared to be thinking. Finally he continued. “I could present to you a sort of picture of these things. The kinds of images people often attach to these kinds of things. To many of my colleagues here, success and prestige mean getting important chairs and sitting at the High Table at dinner. These sorts of things make me uncomfortable. I was once accosted for not wearing a tie to one of these events!” I found it very strange that even Wittgenstein would be uncomfortable sitting at the elegant and famous High Table! He went on. “In the end we all have the right to decide what images we attach to these words. All propositions are of equal value. The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In it no values exist. [25] I was always well- respected for my early work, but it made me unhappy to know that it was incomplete. To me happiness is freedom from these problems. Spending time in the Norwegian forest [sic]. [26] Search yourself. What kind of images do you associate with these words? This is your private lexicon; it will determine your world. The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. ” [27] I was reminded then of how I had stared one sunny afternoon at the solid wooden beams in the reference library on the second floor of the Tower and saw the words of Anatole France translated from his elegant French and carved onto the sturdy beams of 10 the ceiling: “If the object to which one devotes himself is an illusion, the devotion to it is none the less a reality.” [28] As I looked up to answer, I found that I was no longer looking at the face of Wittgenstein but rather at Xiaoxuan. “Hey,” she said. “Sorry I’m late, I had to watch over my laundry!” As we strolled across Yale’s Old Campus Xiaoxuan told me about her experiences. I shared with her my own, calmed by the wise words of Wittgenstein and no longer plagued by the aching questions of purpose and place. “I can create whatever image I desire of such things” I thought to myself. I knew then that I need only remember, as I search for self-understanding, that I am infinitely capable of creating my world. I am infinitely capable of creating my place in this world. Word Count: 2,783 80 words were removed or replaced. 376 words were added. Website: https://webspace.utexas.edu/bag373/p1a.htm Image Sources: Figure 1: www.yale.edu/.../ class_on_old_campus.jpg Figure 2: http://www.browningconstruction.com/images/hr1.jpg Figure 3: www.utexas.edu/.../ graphics/buildings/crd.jpg Figure 4:http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/photo/pcd2818/utarc-tower-ut-tower-73.3.jpg Figure 5: http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=44&stop=2 Figure 6: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/03/vincent/River%20Cam%20by%20St. %20John's2.JPG Figure 7: http://www.uib.no/elin/elpub/uibmag/en01/grafikk/wittgenstein.jpg Endnotes: 11 1. Trinity College. Dept. home page. Fall 2002. Cambridge University. 27 Sept. 2005 <http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=44>. 2. This imagery is inspired by “The College Dash” scene in: Chariots of Fire. Miramax, 1981. 3.Trinity College. Dept. home page. Fall 2002. Cambridge University. 27 Sept. 2005 <http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=44>. 4. Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (1958. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 25. 5. Norman, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 16. 6. Ibid., 23. 7. Ibid., 23. 8. Wittgenstein Qtd. Ibid., 28. 9. Ibid., 10. 10. Norman. Ibid., 22. A somewhat hyperbolic sentiment 11. Cyril Barrett and others ed., Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 52. Wittgenstein lecturing. 12. Note: Many of these ideas were addressed during a series of lectures about religion and aesthetics in 1938. Cyril, Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, 53-69. 13. Wittgenstein Qtd. Norman, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 29. 14. Ibid., 58. 15. Norman, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 26. 16. Ibid., 26. 17. Ibid., 24. 18. Wittgenstein lecturing. Cyril, Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, 69. 19. Ibid., 69. 20. Ibid., 72. 21. Wittgenstein Qtd. Ibid., 26. 22. Ibid., 23. 23. Wittgenstein Qtd. Ibid., 27. 24. Ibid., 32. A quote from a conversation between Norman Malcolm and Wittgenstein 25. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, (New York: the Humanities Press 1961), 125. 12