MSS 130-138, 1945-1949
These are the source notebooks for Investigations Part II (in future referred to simply as Pt II) but they are much else besides. They include entries which look forward to the final notebooks on 'das Innere' , Colour and Certainty, and they begin with passages that include late contributions to Investigations Part I (in future simply Inv) and some afterthoughts about it. Both in the opening 1945 pages and into 1948 they also include contributions (not always used) to the Preface to Inv. I ought to add that no 1945 dates appear in MS 130; the first 1946 dates come about half way through, but many details suggest that the first sixty or eighty pages were written in 1945. These notebooks also include many private passages written in Wittgenstein's code, a few of which escaped censorship in the Cornell microfilm edition. One long passage that did not was made available to me by the efforts of Professor Timothy Smiley, the Secretary of the Master of Clare and the Librarian's staff at Trinity College Cambridge.
I put them to this trouble in the belief that this passage, written on the day of the famous 'poker' incident and the day following, would include some reference to it, but it did not. It contained nothing but an extremely self-centered and sentimental analysis of the problems of Wittgenstein's love life, and it would be no kindness to the people I had troubled (or indeed to anyone else) if I included a translation. A few of the shorter private asides, however, do seem to relate to Wittgenstein's expression of his philosophy, and when this is so I do include them. While making acknowledgements I must also express my gratitude to Sir John Vinelott, QC, for letting me know that the poker incident had come into the news, and for informing me that I had made a mistake in guessing its date from the censored Cornell microfilms.
These penultimate notebooks fall into two sections, MSS 130-135, on which I shall make fairly detailed notes, and MSS 136-138, on which I shall allow myself more sketchy notes --- indeed, I shall be forced to because my copying of them from the Cornell microfilms is more sketchy. My copyings of the first 88 pages of MS 130 are also incomplete, because when I made them I was more interested in anticipations of Pt II than work related to Inv itself. I now regret this bitterly, but since it cannot be long before the full texts are available on the Bergen CD edition, scholars will be able to fill in my gaps for themselves. [In August 2004 I must add that since writing the above I have nearly completed my book, which if publishers allow me will have the title "Climbing out of the Swamp" and the subtitle "What Wittgenstein Wrote". It fills all the gaps left in tthis website essay, thanks to my obtaining in 2002 the Oxford/Bergen electronic edition. It is exhaustively textual, but enlivened by references to Isaiah Berlin, who in effect got me started on it when Wittgenstein died, and to the three original trustees, whom Berlin profoundly disaproved of, especially Elizabeth Anscombe. So it is both a useful companion for students of the electronic edition, and a revealing account of the three trustees' editorial methods. De mortuis nil nisi veritatem.]
Both MS 130 and MS 135 have pessimistic notes written (retrospectively of course) at their beginning. MS 130 has "Dieses Schreibbuch enthält fast nur schlechte Sätze. Manche von ihnen aber können zu besseren Sätzen Anregung geben. Die Meisten sind blosser Abfall." MS 135 has "In diesem Band kommt auf 10 oder 20 Seiten nicht mehr als ein halbwegs guter Abschnitt." MS 135 is mainly written in July 1947 and the first three days of that August, that is to say in the days immediately following Wittgenstein's last term as professor. There is then a gap in notebook entries until 11.10.[47], during which the dictation of TS 229 was presumably begun (now printed as Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology Volume I, whose paragraphs will be quoted with simple § numbers when their provenance is clear, and similarly for Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology Volume II when we meet it). The last entry of 3.8.[47] is § 1125 and the first dictated entry of 11.10. [47] is § 1126. The last entry of that date is § 1137, followed by the date 9.11.47 and the note "[Bis dahin diktiert]." One messy and two other undictated entries follow, and then § 1 of TS 232, now printed (as above) as Rem Ph Ps II. § 5 of that brings us to a new date, 8.12.[47], and the last dictated entry of MS 135 is § 57, written on 18.12.[47]. MS 136 starts with the date 18.12.47 (and § 58).
It is therefore reasonable to take the dictation of TS 229 as the real break, and what follows in MS 135 as prefaratory to MSS 136-138, to which Wittgenstein gave the titles Bände Q, R and S. The second typescript ends after entries of 23.8.[48] in MS 137, the last dictated one being § 736, a clear anticipation of the Certainty notes. Next comes the date 19.10.48 with an unpublished remark about architecture, and then 22.10.[48] with § 1 of Last Writings Volume I, which consists of the trustees. selection from the remainder of MS 137 and from the whole of MS 138. The final dates of these two notebooks are 9.1.49 and 20.5.49 respectively.
I need to make a note about the way my quotations are set out for the purposes of screening on the Internet. Wittgenstein made a strict distinction between what it is convenient for us to call paragraphs and sub-paragraphs. Paragraphs were separated from each other by a line space; within a paragraph, sub-paragraphs merely started on a new line, indented. My Internet programme inserts a line space for all indentations, whether I want one or not. I am therefore adopting the following convention: at the beginning of each new paragraph quoted (in German or English) I put the paragraph sign §; but I mark sub-paragraphs by the sign ¶, which may appear on some screens as the Greek letter pi. So wherever you see a ¶ or a pi, you must take the line space above it to be absent. Very occasionally I start a quotation in the middle of one of Wittgenstein's paragraphs, and leave out a § sign, but this happens so rarely that I do not think it will cause confusion. Perhaps I could also add that my choice of bold print is merely to lessen my eyestrain and has no textual significance whatever. Until I can acquire a better Internet programme and a better screen, this means that my promised internetting of chapters 2 and 3 of my book Climbing out of the Swamp, on Wittgenstein's phenomenological language episode and his rejection of it, has been abandoned [but that is now so close to publication that no-one need fret].
To make a beginning of my notes I shall take the date 3.10.[46] on page 97 of MS 132, a few days before the start of the autumn (Michaelmas) term of Wittgenstein's last year of teaching, and give only a sketch of what preceded that date. This is to let me kill three birds with one stone. It enables me to treat Wittgenstein's final teaching year as a separate entity, which, psychologically, it surely was. It enables me to tell a story about my closest friend among Wittgenstein's pupils, Bruce Hunt, who had been my colleague in the Friends Ambulance Unit; and it enables me to set the scene, both in Wittgenstein's philosophy and his psychology, for the famous poker encounter with Popper.
On what I guess to be the third of October or possibly a day or two earlier, Bruce presented himself to Wittgenstein for his judgement on whether he should be allowed to study Moral Sciences (ie philosophy), in spite of his having obtained a scholarship in mathematics before he left school (Winchester, where he was also a scholar) and joined the FAU (in March 1944, when I met him). I wish he had told me details of the whole interview, which must have extended beyond the following anecdote, for it can hardly on its own have led Wittgenstein to let him switch faculties. Why did Bruce wish to study philosophy, Wittgenstein asked. "To find the truth," Bruce answered. "What do you mean, the truth," Wittgenstein said. "The truth about this table and these chairs?" As a table and chairs philosopher myself I am very happy to give this exchange currency. Whatever Bruce meant, and whatever other people mean when they say the same, I believe their quest could be better described in other words, just as a common alternative, "looking for the meaning of life", is an equal misuse of the word "meaning".
The entries for 3.10.[46] begin with two undictated paragraphs on aspect and then take up the subject of Moore's paradox (whether it is a contradiction to say "I believe p but it isn't true"), with §§ 470-473 (including two undictated paragraphs on the same subject). Then we get two undictated paragraphs which I believe were prompted by Bruce's remark about the truth. In case this appears gullible on my part I quote them in full. They are marked, incidentally, by an elongated S for "schlecht", but what this meant in practice was either that a paragraph needed rewriting or that it was irrelevant to the purpose of preparing a typescript. In other words, it was shorthand for "don't dictate".
§ S The need for a simple rule. Race hatred. "All Jews are bad." The benefit of a simple rule. The need is not less than for rest, for change. As if the only need in thought were the need 'to find the truth'!
§ S 'The passion for generality' is a very serious bias of our minds ["Tendenz"]. (There, incidentally, you see how one uses the word "mind".)
The subject-matter returns to Moore's paradox, ending with two separate entries which are printed as sub-paragraphs of § 478. The second asks whether we could have understood an assumption that someone wishes something before we have learnt to express our own wishes. I cannot guess what this has to do with Moore's paradox, and I do not think anyone would have suspected a connection if they had been dictated as separate paragraphs, as they were written. Or the connection may simply be that the second paragraph enables the logic of assumptions to be introduced, continuing on 4.10.[46] with § 479.
Moore's paradox returns, with topics related to it, on 7.10.[46] on page 136 of MS 132, and does not return again (somewhat allusively) until January 1947 on page [119] of MS 133, a region where both dates and page numbers are missing. The topic that next becomes predominant in October 1946 is aspect or 'seeing as', with the related topic of meaning, as shown in these two undictated paragraphs on page 138 of MS 132, still written on 7.10.[46].
§ S "This face is full of expression." One could also sometimes say "There is a great deal of background to it". This . background. does not have to be explored; but it does invite one to explore it.
§ S Meaning --- the background to a word.
(Remember that in Pt II the long section xi moves on page 214 from aspect to meaning.)
Aspect also includes an undictated paragraph of the same date on page 139, which opens with a child's sketch of a steam railway engine with no wheels and no driver's cab.
§ S [sketch] "This shape reminds me of a locomotive." --- What does that really mean?
¶ Challenged to describe it, I'd perhaps say: "It looks like a locomotive without wheels; this is the boiler, this is the chimney." etc. But it could also mean: I saw a locomotive like that once upon a time, the occasion comes back to me now.
On 8.10, on pages 143-4, we get two undictated paragraphs which include a sketch that includes not only a cab but wheels, of formula 2-4-0, but with the wheels of only one side visible. This gives me an excuse to quote my own responses, made to give me light relief during the labours of copying.
§ S If someone saw a modern 'streamlined' locomotive and asked which was the front and which the back, the whole art of this depiction of a shape would be lost on him.
[My note: He must be thinking of e.g. the German Schnelltriebwagen, like the Flying Hamburger, not the Mallard type.]
§ S [sketch] It is remarkable how the character of this shape changes according to whether one sees the left end or the right as the foremost.
[My note: One also has to take account of the French, whose aspect-blindness consists in being unable to visualise the wheels hidden on the other side: hence Honneger's title "Pacific 231" because he thought a 4-6-2 was a 2-3-1.]
These remarks on seeing as are by no means the earliest in the 'penultimate' notebooks, let alone the earliest of all. One can be found in the Brown Book. The earliest in my copying of these 'penultimate' notebooks is on page 91 of MS 130 and it is printed as § 9 of Rem Ph Ps I, depicting a cube-sketch which appears four times in a text book with four different interpretations. I believe there is a wartime notebook in which this possibility is given a behaviouristic explanation, but here what is in question is whether different experiences went with the different interpretations. Since the subject of aspect became so important to Wittgenstein, I shall take this oportunity to enlarge on this opening MS 130 treatment of it before coming back to October 1946.
One can take §§ 9-15 as an exercise in examining what "different experiences" might mean. § 11 is crucial in this examination, and Wittgenstein misses its opportunity. He is apparently thinking of William Rushton's experiments on the retina. Professor Rushton assured me in 1978, a year before he died, that Wittgenstein never asked him for advice on colour science, but it is reasonable to assume that Rushton did tell him something about his retina researches. What, Wittgenstein asks here, could one infer if such an experimenter [as Rushton] found that, on someone's seeing the cube diagram in four different contexts, retinal events tended to resemble those when an actual glass cube, a wire representation of the visible half of a cube, an arrangement of three wooden squares and an overturned open box are viewed. These different kinds of three dimensional viewing could indeed induce retinal changes as one adjusts one's focus to different portions of four different three dimensional objects, but there can be no corresponding changes in viewing four identical two dimensional diagrams. Such a discovery, Wittgenstein says [if, per impossibile, it were made], could be considered as proof that one really does see the diagram differently each time.
¶ But with what justification?
¶ How can the experiment say something about the nature of immediate experience? --- It assigns it to a particular class of phenomenon.
I find the final remark completely meaningless. And if the experiment turned out as Wittgenstein suggests, it would have quite a lot to say about immediate experience. Empirically minded investigators can resurrect Rushton's extremely delicate methods and use them to carry out Wittgenstein's experiment if they want to, but the whole interest of Wittgenstein's own grammatical investigations is that while what one sees is the same (both the physical object and the visual image), what one sees it as is different.
Not until § 51 and page [115] of MS 130 does the topic turn from 'seeing as' to what one might call 'meaning as'. § 70, which runs from page [131] to page [132], introduces the famous duck-rabbit (really a duck-hare) with a sketch in which the hare looks remarkably self-satisfied and the duck morose. By § 87 on page [142] we get 'feeling as' (a hole in a tooth), on page [144] § 90 introduces 'hearing as' , and on page [146] the first date is visible on the Cornell microfilms, 26.5.46. The date 10.5.46 given by Elizabeth Anscombe in her introduction to Rem Ph Ps I is presumably covered by one of her censorship slips, or perhaps refers to some other notebook. In § 91 the colour of vowels is considered, in § 92 the meanings of "have" in "I have a house" and "I have built a house" and in § 93 the language of a tribe of slaves is discussed. This is followed on page [150] by the undictated but clearly relevant passage
§ S Don't see language as something homogenous!
¶ I.e., direct your attention to language games, not to language's apparatus.
¶ That is the reason why Aristoteleian logic occupies me so little.
After this, with § 94, the word "bank" arrives as a word with two meanings (in German just as in English, except that in German the other meaning is "bench"). The experience of meaning interleaves with various other experiences (of déja vu, for example) through the May entries. June has no entries, and the next date is 22.7.46 on page [185] of MS 130, with, in code,
§ S [I am frightfully oppressed. Completely uncertain as to my future. My love-affair with R has entirely taken my energy up. For the last nine months gripped me almost like an insanity. It is as if I had run with my whole force against an appearance [Phänomen, perhaps with the meaning of a will o' the wisp]; sometimes with the hope of catching up with it, more often remaining in fear or despair. But I can't blame myself about it, which is to say that I don't. Was it good, was it bad? I don't know. I only want to say: it was a terrible fate.]
and, on page [188], also in code but in English, [And may God have mercy on my soul.].
This R decodes as ambiguously I or J and was certainly not Ben Richards, who comes to the rescue on page [286], on 8.8.[46]:, and probably in the paragraph below; nor was he Roy Fouracre, who, as an internet correspondent pointed out to me, was not released from the army until later.
§ I am very sad, very sad. I feel as if I were at the end of my life. And yet it is possible that my life is going on for many years; how? God knows. The one thing that my love for B has done for me is: it has chased my other petty concerns, about position and work, into the background, at least for a short while. I sometimes see that it is more important to live than to have such and such a position.
Ben Richards was certainly the subject of later confessions, and the tension between his feelings for him and I/J appears to have contributed to Wittgenstein's tautness of nerves at the time of the Popper meeting. I met Richards in Elizabeth Anscombe's house in Oxford, where I also met someone whom I believe to have been Fouracre. He was very proud of having had conversations with Wittgenstein which, while not philosophical, were of serious significance. My only other memory of him was that he wore a sports jacket made of genuine cavalry twill, somewhat threadbare and badly cared for but, even so, the sort of thing one has to go to a real tailor for. [In memory of which, as I describe in my book, I used to call him Cavalry Twill. See my final note in this section.]
Meanwhile, on pages [201] and [203], have come two versions (the first dictated as § 147 of Rem Ph Ps I) of what became one of Iris Murdoch's favourite quotations, a parenthesis on page 222 of Pt II, in section x. I give the undictated version.
§ S A whole cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of practical application in our symbolism // in our language // // drop of grammatical application.
On page [228], on 30.7.46, someone who is 'gestaltblind' or aspect-blind turns up, undictated, and on page [238] someone who is meaning-blind and is also undictated. The first of these invented people appears in print in § 170, and both together in § 189, written on 2.8.46 on pages [254-5], where doubt is cast on both concepts. I used to be convinced that Bedeutungsblindheit, at least, was or ought to have been an Aunt Sally of a concept, invented by Wittgenstein to be knocked down: even though he began by taking it seriously, it seemed to become emptier and emptier as he elaborated it. So many paragraphs on this subject are left undictated --- and I do not want to bog my text down by quoting them here --- that scholars will have to wait for the final volume of the Bergen CD edition to check; nevertheless, I finally decided that Wittgenstein's meaning was serious. There are also paragraphs on Bedeutungserlebnis and Bedeutungsblindheit ahead, written on 8-9.12.[47] from page [157] to the top of page [161] of MS 135, just after the first thirteen of the paragraphs dictated into TS 232. The seven paragraphs in question were not dictated but on the contrary were marked by increasingly squiggly Ss, which made me suspect when copying them that Wittgenstein had a guilty conscience for taking his Bedeutungsblinder so seriously. I shall be commenting on them when I meet these paragraphs chronologically.
In the present context, moving to pages 16-17 of MS 131, 11.8.[46], there is an interesting dictated entry, § 232, where having an image of a meaning is compared to having a dream. This enables Wittgenstein to say that we mostly speak without dreaming as we do so, while der Bedeutungsblinde never dreams as he speaks. All I could could think to say as I copied this was "Der Bedeutungsblinde ein Traum . . ." [Just the sort of literary reference that Wittgenstein would have appreciated but I now think I was wrong, and if you want to know any more you must buy my book.]
Wittgenstein's undictated (and hence unprinted) remarks are often extremely illuminating, and I quote one here which is undictated in spite of being marked with his approval sign, from page 22 of MS 131, 11.8.[46].
§ / What did you mean as you asked "why?"? --- I meant: "why has he gone away?" --- Whom did you mean by "he"? --- The chap you were speaking about. --- And you meant all that as you were uttering the word "why?"
This, I believe, condenses a whole cloud of the philosophy of intentionality into a drop of common sense: we can mean as much as that when we say a single word, and we do not need to invent Bedeutungserlebnisse to explain our meaning it. Better evidence still for the irrelevance of Bedeutungserlebnisse (no-one denies our sometimes having them) comes on page 21 of MS 131, where someone who cannot distinguish in German between "sondern" the verb and "sondern" the connective would not be able to do simple school-exercises --- but Wittgenstein declares that no teacher of German would tell a pupil to speak the word in isolation and mean it in one or other of those senses. This observation is so telling that it not only became § 239 of Rem Ph Ps I but got into section ii of Pt II on page 175 and impressed itself on my memory when I read the typescript in 1952.
The date 13.8.36 comes on page 32 of MS 131, but the remaining eight lines of the page are censored, followed at the top of page 33 in code by "Eitelkeit." (conceit). This is followed, without code, and as part of a continuous paragraph, by:
This is a similar case to someone not knowing his place in a society. Should he try to dress like them, should it be a matter of indifference to him how he dresses, should he be proud of not being dressed like the others, should he join in their conversation, and if he does, what role should he play in it? If he is 'self conscious' [in English] that is difficult. What is the scientist [supposed to be]? Is he a researcher into truth, or a benefactor of humanity, or an artist, or is he a craftsman? If he had religion his difficulty would be lifted. [To which I noted as I copied: Wittgenstein in Trinity!]
On page 46 there is an undictated passage expressing his own Shakespeare-blindheit: he is willing to take the word of a Milton for his qualities but still thinks that thousands of professors of literature down the centuries have praised him out of convention and on false grounds, and still do so.
On 16.8.[46], at the bottom of page 53 of MS 131, § 254, a paragraph mentioning William James begins. Many ideas taken from James are spread throughout these notebooks, and there are references to him in Inv and Pt II. The earliest notebook reference I know is in MS 124, a small notebook used both early and late in the war, where, in one of the later passages, Wittgenstein calls James's work a mine for philosophers.
On page 65 there begins a long censored passage, with the date 19.8.[46] appearing in the middle, and with all of page 66 and most of page 67 censored.
On page 83 there is the date 22.8.[46], followed by a long passage which became § 286 of Rem Ph Ps I and the opening of section v of Pt II (page 179). It is followed on page 85 by § 287 and at the foot of page 87 by § 288, and then on page 88 by § 289, which will also be found in section v of Pt II, interleaved with passages from the undictated notebooks (in print as §§ 351-353 of Last Writings Volume I). Section vi of Pt II (page 181) received eight contributions from this region, ranging from Rem Ph Ps I's § 293 (on page 92 of MS 131) to its § 338 (on page 152) --- the painting of Goethe composing the ninth symphony. Similarly, on page 69 of MS 131 the first of four contributions to section iv of Pt II started, this one written on 19.8.[46] after nearly two censored pages, and reading "Wie aber, wenn die Religion lehrt . . ." The last contribution to that section comes from page 161 of MS 131 (it is § 345 of Rem Ph Ps I) and the middle two from page 80, namely §§ 279 and 281. I take this degree of contribution to Pt II in this region to show that Wittgenstein was confident of his philosophical work in spite of his personal problems at this time.
On pages 128 and 129, dated 28.8.[46], 'seeing as' returns in the form of unprinted diagrams which look remarkably like illustrations from Abbott's Flatland, followed by what became § 315.
At page 138, at the end of the 28.8. entry, comes an offering to psychoanalysts:
§ S I say to myself "Doch vom Weizenbrot, dass sie [she] freundlich bot . . .", and the word "freundlich" doesn't seem to fit properly; until I remembered that it must be "dass er [he] freundlich bot", and now that is right, for if he offered it 'freundlich' that was affectionate, but from her it would have been cold.
To this I commented as I copied it, "Poor man --- what did his mother do to him?" I cannot explain the grammar of "dass" where I should have expected "das", but I trust my copying. [I have still to check this in 'facsimile' but will do so before my book is publisshed.]
As another example of this region of MS 131 contributing as much to Pt II as post-dictation MSS 137-8, on pages 188-195 under the date 3.9.[46], dictated as §§ 368-9 and 373, there are three of the paragraphs of section vii of Pt II, § 369 being much trimmed in arriving there; while the fourth paragraph of this section comes from MS 137 or MS 138, as § 392 of Last Writings Volume I.
On pages 220 and 221, dated 8.9.[46], there are two consecutive censored half pages, with a little more censored on page 222 on 9.9.[46], and MS 131 ends on page 224, MS 132 beginning on the same day, dated as 9.9.46.
On page 7 of that (10.9.[46]) there is an interesting harking back to a 1930 volume (MS 108, page 114):
§ S | Ramsey's theory of identity and a hand-glass on which my mirror-image is painted. Function and technique.| [Enclosed by vertical lines to show that it is an aside.]
On the same page but the next day, 11.9.[46], there is one of Wittgenstein's defences of his linguistic technique, a very reasonable one (especially since it only asks questions) in distinction to another which I take exception to ahead.
§ S / Are we dealing with mistakes and difficulties that are as old as language? Are they, so to speak, illnesses that are tied to a language's use, or are they of a more special nature, peculiar to our civilisation?
¶ Or again: is the preoccupation with language, which permeates our whole philosophy, an age old move of all philosophising // of all philosophy //, an age old struggle? Or, again, is this it: does philosophising always waver between metaphysics and language criticism [Sprachkritik]?
On pages 39-40, on 19.9.[46], there are two undictated paragraphs on seeing K as |< which I mention in "45 Minutes" as leaving me wondering what else there was to say about the problem. And back on pages 14-15, just before the date 13.9.[46], there is a passage where my bad handwriting led me to doubt what I had believed since 1952: that Wittgenstein's meaning was that when one sees something now as this and now as that, only aspect changes, while the visual data do not. I was enormously relieved when I checked and found my error. And if neurologists now tell us that there is more to the matter than that, I am willing to believe them, but I still cannot understand what philosophical problem remained for Wittgenstein to worry about --- until, indeed, philosophers pay attention to neurologists and make a new start by trying to translate their findings into common sense English.
Following the date 20.9.[46] on page 43, there is on page 45, just underneath § 430, an undictated paragraph on the duck-hare, followed on pages 46-47 by a censored passage and then, undictated, the following introduction to the ideas of James.
§ S "My response is different" [in English]. The explanation is of a similar nature to James's 'theory' of emotions [that they are caused or at least influenced by the physiological occurrences that are taken to be a response to them]. It appears to explain one kind of experience as the resulting effects [Resultante] of a more easily understandable kind [of experience]. In psychology it would be something similar to the kinetic theory of gases in physics. [Typically, Wittgenstein takes the next written paragraph, § 431, which begins "Eigentlich aber ist so eine Theorie" and dictates it as refering to the hypothesis mentioned in § 430.]
On pages 66-67, some way into the date 25.9.[46], there is a first application of the principles of the conceptual analysis of colour declared on pages 71-78 of MS 130, very possibly written in 1945, which can be read on pages 341-342 of Josef Rothhaupt's Farbthemen in Wittgensteins Gesamtnachlass.
In this region of MS 132 there are also references to grief, for example § 438 on page 63; whether it is a private object observed by the soul, undictated on page 65; and § 446 on page 73 (27.9.[46]). On 29.9.[46] there is another (§ 448) on page 77, and beginning on the same page the following passage, uncensored but in code.
§ "For our wishes hide, even from ourselves, what is wished for. Gifts come down to us in their own forms, etc". I say this to myself when I receive the love of B. For I know well that it is the great, rare present; that it is a rare precious stone I know well, --- and also that it is not quite of the kind I have dreamed of.
This is followed by § 449, and on page 79 there is a James reference, § 475, where he records that he seems to be able actually to put James's theory into practice, when making a happy face makes him happy and making a miserable face makes him miserable.
On page 85, immediately under the date 30.9.[46], there is a censored pasage of nine lines, followed by an undictated passage which (especially with its redraftings) strikes me as somewhat unbalanced.
§ S The effect that it has on us when we spend a long time looking for an object / thing // looking for something // : to think that the Divinity knows where it is all the time, that it doesn't, like me, look for it, all stirred up, here when the thing is there. The power of a picture! // like me looking zealously and worked up there while the thing lies there. . . . // // , like me looking again and again [crossed out] time and again through everything there while the thing lies there. The power of a picture!
After a separate undictated pargraph at the bottom of page 86, rewritings of the paragraph above begin all over again on page 87, to no better effect. If it were not for the repeated tinkering one could see the basic idea as witty self-mockery.
Following this, however, at the bottom of page 87 and running on beyond where 2.10.[46] starts on page 89, an idea begins to be worked on to excellent effect. It leads to one of the most telling passages in Pt II, the middle three paragraphs of its opening section. The first of these, on grief as a recurring pattern in the carpet or tapestry of our lives, which is drafted in § 406 of Last Writings Volume I, only shares the word "Kummer" with its distant origin, while the other two paragraphs are recognisable as §§ 458 and 459 of Rem Ph Ps I, and they can be read in manuscript on pages 88 and 89 of MS 132. I quote here, therefore, the least recognisable (and undictated) paragraph which started it all, from pages 87 and 88.
§ S "Don't you feel now the grief that oppresses you? Like your toothache too, the impression made on you by your facial expression [den Gesichtseindruck --- remember that he had been writing about the Jamesian consequences of sensing oneself smile] etc?" But what kind of question is that? Certainly not one about your feelings. No doubt a grammatical one, then? Correspondingly, there will be similar problems outside psychology --- for example concerning the concept of force or of energy. Or would such a question be analogous to this: "Can there be a green circle of smaller diameter than the wavelength of green, or a note of shorter duration than its period of vibration?"?
On page 97 the date 3.10.[46] arrives, which is, as it were, where we came in with Bruce Hunt and Wittgenstein's putative reference to his interview with him. To keep up the metaphor, however, the sketch of a 2-4-0 on page 144 of MS 132 is where we went out again, to review the early work on 'seeing as' or aspect. That, therefore, is where we must now wind forward to.
From the 2-4-0 onwards, aspect remains a main topic for many pages, and I find it difficult to select points of particular interest. There is one general exclamation, on page 153 at the end of the 8.10.[46] entry, which certainly requires comment since it is relevant not only to aspect but to all Wittgenstein's 'psychological concept' analysis. Ever since reading Pt II in 1952 (and I felt much the same of Inv itself) I have been convinced that while introspection was quite definitely not the subject matter of Wittgenstein's analysis, nevertheless a phenomenal power of introspection helped him to carry it out. That he was aware of this as a possible source of conflict is shown by the following outburst.
§ S But Oh! don. t let yourself be led into error by the fact that you are again and again bringing psychological phenomena into consideration! [Singular in German: die psychologische Erscheinung.] Think much more about how you judge whether the other fellow is having this experience // what your criterion is for the other fellow having this experience.
What follows is the date 9.10.[46], under which a few lines are censored. All the other entries of that day are on aspect with little to distinguish them, except for one where Wittgenstein admits himself how little to distinguish there is. This comes on page 154.
§ S In one sense the heaping up of examples is good; in another it is the surest sign of philosophical disease.
At the end of this day's entries, however, on page 162, is one that drew itself to my attention because of a translation problem. I quote it in German. It is § 518 in Rem Ph Ps I.
§ / Kein Aspekt der nicht (auch) Auffassung ist.
The translator's "conception" really will not do here, but her anxiety in selecting it is understandable. "Auffassung" comes remarkably close to the concept expressed by the word "Aspekt". Wittgenstein's remark is liable to be taken as a tautology, but it is not. A reasonably free translation would be "No 'seeing as' that isn't also 'taking as'."
This gives me an opportunity to elaborate on my belief expressed above, that while Wittgenstein had no philosophical reason to worry about this problem, given the assumptions of his time about what constituted visual data, nevertheless later neurological discoveries could have provided him with grist for his philosophical mill. Of course, this could be a reason for admiring his insight, in so far as he was tantalised by smelling a rat that he couldn't put his finger on. For my own part, I not only have the advantage of recent neurological research but of failing eyesight, if that can be called an advantage. I frequently fail to recognise an approaching face, and having seen it as belonging to X suddenly realise that it belongs to Y. The face actually gives an impression of having changed from X's to Y's. So I now think that there are three possibilities to distinguish, not two: there are cases where seeing something as this and then as that goes with a change in visual data, there are cases where the only change is in interpretation, and finally there are cases where, if challenged, one has to admit that one has interpreted but had not been aware that there was any alternative interpretation. The latter could perhaps be called 'taking for granted as'.
Page 187 of MS 132 is the last one numbered by Wittgenstein, and its dated entry of 14.10.[46] consists solely of § 544. 15.10.[46] comes on page [188], where an undictated paragraph moves from 'seeing as' to 'hearing as'. (See §§ 545 and 546, written on that date.) On page [190] the date 16.10.[46] is followed by three censored lines, and on page [191] there are five, possibly hiding a date, since the next is 19.10.[46] on page [192]. The subject matter has widened, and includes identity (§ 547 on page [191], where we are told that we can decide what counts as identity).
On 19.10.[46] we reach the subject of meaning with §§ 548-551, the first of which I find mealy-mouthed. Wittgenstein wants to defend himself against the common charge that his type of philosophy is only about the use of words. So he distinguishes. There is nothing philosophical about merely observing that someone's use of a word does not correspond to sanctioned usage (one is just doing a Fowler, one could say). Philosophical conflict only arises when someone's description of his usage fails to agree with his actual usage. But what, I want to know, is philosophical about that? It is surely a matter for a linguistic psychologist. There is a lesson to be learnt here. The fact of the matter is that philosophers find linguistic usage interesting --- but they come a cropper when they try to specify or justify which aspects of usage make their interest a philosophical one. Healthy philosophers take an interest in all aspects of language, and where, here or there, something of philosophical interest turns up, their interest in it as philosophers does not need to be defended, and a theoretical delineation of what constitutes philosophy should not be required of them. I long ago expressed this conviction in a four-liner:
Sweet and Skeat were marvellous men
Who thought about language again and again,
And when everyone else was abed and asnore
They thought about language more and more
--- which was intended to convey to young philosophers the message "Be like Sweet and Skeat --- think about language --- don't keep asking yourselves whether you are thinking about it in the proper philosophical manner approved of by Wittgenstein and his followers". [I can now explain that my four-liner was inspired by Elizabeth's superior-looking face when she gave me a review copy she had been sent of Bruno Snell's Der Aufbau der Sprache, which, she said, I might find interesting but for her just wasn't philosophy].
§§ 552-3 (on pages [195-6]) deal with the smell of coffee, but not in a way that could lead one to talk of 'smelling as'.
On page [197], there are two introspective undictated paragraphs, in both of which Wittgenstein discusses Lenau's Faust. I can offer no comment on this except to say that in comparing himself to Lenau he is not being conceited --- quite the contrary. The first of these paragraphs begins:
§ S I often fear insanity. Have I any reason to assume that this fear is not so to speak an optical illusion: I take something or other to be a near-by abyss when it is nothing of the kind? The only experience I know of that is evidence for its being no illusion is the case of Lenau.
On page [202] on 20.10.[46] the following paragraph, set between vertical lines to show that it is an aside, is of psychological interest.
§ | When an earthquake has passed, one brings order back into what has survived it, as if it has been a small disturbance in one's daily order. One doesn't want to think that the next tremor can detroy everything.|
Entries for 21.10.[46] begin on page [203], and on page [205] a long passage is censored. Underneath it, at the foot of the page, comes an unexpected observation about Bacon, of which I quote the opening.
§ I believe that Bacon was no sharp thinker. He had big, so to speak wide, visions. But anyone who has only those is bound to be magnificent in promise but inadequate in accomplishment.
This seems to have so little to do with the Bacon we all know and love that ever since first discovering it I have wondered what Wittgenstein had been reading by him. To my great relief I now find from Josef Rothhaupt's book (page 304, where he quotes a letter to von Wright of 19.1.50) that the answer is nothing. He had read about him in Goethe's Farbenlehre.
On page [207], and written in the middle of entries for 21.10.[46], a series of paragraphs on the privacy of one's own thoughts begins with § 564. In one, § 568, Wittgenstein describes himself sitting in a class before a lecture and thinking to himself, and he wonders (not in class but in his notebook) what could be inferred if someone made a stab at guessing his thoughts, wrote them down and showed them to him, whereupon he said "Yes --- that's exactly what I was thinking". If he then doubted whether he had indeed been thinking them, or had been influenced by reading his pupil's notes, no final answer would be possible.
These paragraphs, from § 564 to § 572, which starts at the very end of MS 132 and continues on page 1 of MS 133, are all dictated. Subsequently, undictated paragraphs are interspersed. The ones that are dictated carry through to § 586 on 24.10.[46]. § 585, however, and its undictated predecessor, on MS 133. s page 11, sum up the theme of this series (and in effect wind it up).
§ S "No-one can possibly know what is going on in me; for whatever he observed it wouldn't be that." Here grammar is being forged.
§ [585] / "I don't know what you are thinking. Tell me what you are thinking!" That means something like: "Speak!"
The theme is the difference between the aspects of privacy which can be assigned to grammar and those which are a matter of fact and could be supposed to be different. For example, § 569 says that we are usually confident about what we have been thinking if we are challenged by someone who fancies himself as a mind reader, but if pressed we might say our memory was at fault, and societies can be imagined which regularly let themselves be browbeaten by mind readers.
This distinction is set out quite soon after the beginning of the series, with §§ 566-8. In the course of the days 21.10.[46] to 24.10.[46] one might think one detected changing emphases, but if so these are merely reverberations of Wittgenstein's personal troubles: I do not believe that he wavered for one moment in his conviction that he had drawn his distinction accurately.
Nevertheless, his detailed exploration of the distinction, quite apart from my guess that personal problems played a part, could give a false impression that he was in some doubt. The printed paragraphs 564-586 are there for anyone to examine. I have already quoted part of § 568 and the whole of § 585, and now quote some undictated paragraphs, including one which gives me a pleasant reminder of a scene in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. I also need to mention a further factor which could contribute to the impression that Wittgenstein suffered from philosophical doubt, namely his desire to give the philosophical problem poetic expression, a printed example of which can be found at the end of § 574.
On 23.10.[46], a day and a page into MS 133, there comes:
§ S One does not have to see insanity as an illness. Why not as a sudden --- more or less sudden --- character change?
¶ Every human being is (or most are) mistrustful, and perhaps towards relations more than towards others. Has mistrust grounds [singular --- einen Grund]? Yes and no. One can give grounds for it but they are not conclusive. Why shouldn't someone suddenly become much more distrustful of people? Why not much more uncommunicative? Or emptied of love? --- Don't people do this even in the normal run of things? Where is the boundary line between will and can? Do I not want to communicate with anyone any more or can't I? If so much can lose its charm, why not everything? If someone is sly [verschlagen --- a word with many meanings] in normal life, why shouldn't he --- and perhaps suddenly --- become much more sly? And much more inadequate?
After § 573 (another poetic one) we get, on page 4, and harking back to it,
§ S "But the fact is, that a human being knows only his own thoughts; that they are something that belongs to him alone, something hidden from others."
¶ Is this like my heartbeats, which also [factually] only I perceive? Is it to be compared with the fact that [factually] only I feel it when I have ruined my stomach, --- or is the proposition like [grammatically]: "Each one of us pereives [changed from feels] only his own pains"?
(My only complaint with this is that besides the factual proposition that normally other people are not aware of public signs that we have eaten the wrong thing, we still do have symptoms of queasiness which, being symptoms and not signs, are grammatically private. I have included Wittgenstein's change from "fühlt" to "spürt" in case anyone wishes to argue that my assessment of public and private has been over influenced by Chaplin's Modern Times.)
This is followed on the same page by another undictated paragraph which I quote now, the precursor of one which completes the entries of the twenty fourth (quoted in "45 Minutes" and again ahead).
§ S The proposition [the one in quotation marks above] seems to say: "We have, from our very nature, a means of keeping things secret, a chest into which no-one can gain entrance, so locked away are our processes of thinking, for example, and feeling.
That might be called Wittgenstein daring a poetic expression of the grammatical to give an impression of being factual. These paragraphs end (just after § 586) on page 12 with, as I promised, the undictated
§ S Oh a key can lie for ever where the master [locksmith] has placed it, and never be used to unlock the lock that the master wrought it for.
That ends the entries for 24.10.[46], and the next day was Friday the twenty fifth, when the Moral Science Club (which normally met on a Thursday) met to be addressed by Popper, who could not come the day before. I owe these details to the researches of Professor Timothy Smiley into the minutes of the Moral Science Club, which give the date as "Oct 26", a mistake that has been copy-catted in recent discussions. Wittgenstein's entry for 25.10.[46] is completely obscured in the Cornell microfilms, and is written in his code. So is the entry for 26.10.[46] (the date obscured by Cornell censorship as well). Only on 27.10.[46] are there two uncensored (and undictated) entries, the first of which appears to hark back to the evening of the twenty fifth, when Wittgenstein left the meeting (which he was chairing) after, reputedly, brandishing a poker at Popper. (As the minutes put it, "The meeting was charged to an unusual degree with a spirit of controversy.")
It is, of course, only my own surmise that the long coded entry for 25.10.[46] was written after Wittgenstein came back to his rooms after leaving the meeting, and not earlier in the day, but it does seem reasonable to suppose that he took the opportunity of an unexpected early evening to let his hair down about his personal problems. Incidentally, there is a bibliographical detail to mention, revealed by the pages of photocopy sent me by the courtesy of Professor Smiley (as Acting Master of Clare), his secretary and the staff of the Wren. Page 16 appears as page 9 (in the top right hand corner) as well as Wittgenstein's 16 (top middle). The new numerals were clearly added by the Wren staff, very elegantly and in a style quite distinct from Wittgenstein's continental numerals. They presumably did this because Wittgenstein had committed the bibliographical sin of starting his notes on a left-hand side and putting his "1" on that side. The two entries for 27.10.[46] are clearly connected, and I quote them both.
§ S "Not everyone who derides his chains is free" is something one can say of those who deride linguistic investigations in philosophy and do not see that they themselves are entangled in deep conceptual confusions.
§ S The investigation of language in philosophy is a [matter of] describing and comparing concepts, with the help of concepts constructed ad hoc as well.
This adverbial "ad hoc" is a variant term for the noun "Vergleichsobjekt" in Inv § 130, describing the early artificial language games, constructed for a comparison with aspects of actual usage. Intriguingly, the noun occurs in notebooks of 1930 and 1931, just before and after the very first language games were invented, but without referring to them. Nedo's Konkordanz zu den Bändern 1-5 has four references to it, only the last of which even approaches the meaning of Inv § 130. This was written on 19.[7.31] and can be found on page 60 of Volume 4 of the Wiener Ausgabe, in a section headed "[Nachtrag und Zusätze]".
As to the second remark of 27.10.[46], with its "ein Beschreiben und Vergleichen der Begriffe mit Hilfe auch ad hoc konstruirter Begriffe", what surprises me about it is how unmomentous it is. Wittgenstein has just accused Popper of deriding the philosophical use of linguistic investigations, pauses before saying what linguistic investigations are all about --- and out of the elephant trap comes a mouse.
The next day's writing is devoted to an undictated paragraph which seems all of a piece with the background ideas of these notebooks but does not lead to anything in the immediate neighbourhood, so I quote it in full.
§ S / I say "Let me think!", think, then talk --- what happened as I was thinking? I thought. (Naturally, that isn't an answer.) But I didn't do nothing during that time! If mental vacuity is what is meant by "doing nothing" I did do something and not nothing. --- Imagine someone told you: "My mind was not still but in movement". But what is meant by "still" and "movement" in this context? We must climb down to the concept of "describing" --- of "reporting" or of "narrating" an occurrence. --- But how is it with the occcurrence that I am reporting? ! --- Are you certain that you are detecting an . occurrence. ? And if you say you are certain, what is this certainty worth? What does it count for in business [im Verkehr]? ("Black, a visual senation or a lack of visual sensation?")
Even though further remarks on language do keep the subject alive, only one, quoted ahead, has an obvious reference to the argument with Popper, and it comes on the very day when Wittgenstein presented a paper intended to put the argument to rights. There is, however, a disguised reference to Popper on 31.10.[46] on page 21 of MS 133. Underneath § 591, certainly linguistic, there is an undictated remark about Freud and then the undictated
§ / Yes: a philosopher [der Philosoph] wants to influence method.
Popper was a methodologist, and to corroborate my claim that this is a reference to him I can cite the fact that § 1109 of Rem Ph Ps I, written on page [129] of MS 135 on 1.8.[47] and discussing method, has in manuscript, at the end of the original but left out in print, the parenthesis "(Popper.)".
The meeting of the Moral Science Club devoted to this 'putting to rights' paper took place on Thursday the fourteenth of November. To quote the minutes: "Professor Wittgenstein, 'Philosophy'. Professor Wittgenstein's main aim was to correct some misunderstandings about Philosophy as practiced by the Cambridge school (ie by Wittgenstein himself). In a way the paper was a reply to Dr Popper's paper (Oct 23rd). [Another minute-writer's mistake.] Dr Ewing in the chair."
The second of this series of papers was given on Thursday October the thirty first by J L Austin, on 'Non Descriptions', or the performative use of language as Austin came to term it. This was, one might say, up Wittgenstein's street, and there is no hint in the minutes that any disagreement arose between them (Wittgenstein was in the chair again). Nevertheless, tension was present in some form, and one must assume that it was subjective, felt by Wittgenstein, unless members really were cold towards him because of the Friday before. On the day of Austin's paper he had written, in code and among ordinary entries,
§ Oh, why do I feel as if I were writing a poem when I write philosophy?
¶ It is, here, as if there were something small here that has a wonderful meaning. Like a leaf, or a flower.
Censored by Cornell, I knew this passage from the Wren microfilms in 1980 and used it to justify my belief that for Wittgenstein the whole 1929-1951 corpus was a single, composite work of art. On the day after Austin's paper, dated in full as 1.11.46, Wittgenstein writes, not in code,
§ Yesterday "Moral Science Club": I myself conceited, and stupid as well. The 'atmosphere' miserable. --- Should I go on teaching?
Not knowing the date of the Popper meeting, I always took that as referring to it on the many occasions when I read it. I still find it difficult to believe that it had anything, except coincidence in time, to do with a paper read by the courteous and reasonable Austin. The entries that follow on the first of November are unbrokenly dictated as §§ 593-600, ending only with a short undictated entry on irony in music. The next day, 2.11.[46], opens with a longer undictated entry on Grillparzer, and then devotes itself and the following days, ending with 11.11.[46], to colour. These entries can be read in full on pages 580 to 588 of Josef Rothhaupt's Farbthemen, as can the censored (but mostly uncoded) entries of 12.11.[46].
13.11.[46] is devoted solely to § 647, on counting, while 14.11.[46], the date of Wittgenstein's own paper, begins with three censored lines and the following undictated entry, all that seems to count as preparation.
§ S "But why do you only talk of the use of words?" I don't only talk of the use of words but just as much of the use of a colour sample, of a measuring rod, of a clock, of facial expressions, of gestures.
The rest of that date is occupied by § 618, and 15.11.[46] opens in uncensored code with
§ Don't tie yourself to someone unworthy and leave someone worthy in the lurch. Don't be too cowardly to put a person's friendship to the test. If a prop doesn't take it when one props oneself with it, it isn't any use, however sad that might be.
¶ A stick that looks fine as long as one carries it but bends as soon as you lean on it is useless.
Various entries on mental arithmetic follow this, §§ 649-641, moving on to 16.11.[46] with some undictated remarks on the same subject. Both here and later, dictated and undictated remarks show that mental arithmetic is being discussed from a linguistic point of view --- what do we say about the mental arithmetic accomplished by ourselves and others?
What is intriguing about the long aside about colour transcribed by Rothhaupt is that it comes on either side of the November the seventh Moral Science Club meeting, the third in this series, whose minutes are simply "Nov 7 Impromptu discussion opened by Dr Malcolm. Professor Wittgenstein in chair." The most obvious assumption is that Wittgenstein asked Malcolm to do this because he was in the middle of work on colour and needed more time before giving his own address (I find it difficult to think of Wittgenstein 'delivering a paper' in the normal sense, but no doubt people who were there will be telling us whether he read from a prepared script). For myelf, however, I cannot help suspecting that he gave himself this colour task precisely to postpone replying to Popper.
On page [80] of MS 133, the date 18.11.[46] is followed by a single undictated entry:
§ S One of philosophy's difficulties is that its trains of thought are so long. // . . . the lengths of its trains of thought . . .
The date 19.11.[46] is followed by Cornell censorship for the rest of the page, for the whole of page [81] and the top of page [82], with, following that,
§ S I cannot kneel to pray because, as it were, my knees are stiff. I should fear for my salvation if I became soft.
Another undictated entry on this page is
§ S I show my pupils excerpts from an enormous landscape in which they cannot possibly find their way.
There is a quite large censored passage on pages [84] and [85] under the date 27.11.[46], followed by
§ S The philosopher wrestles with the concepts of his time.
The last entries of November and the first in December begin with an undictated paragraph on a race of 'soul-less' slaves, which have already appeared (in § 93) on pages [148]-[149] of MS 130. The next paragraph, § 661, the first for December, presents the problem that this race was invented to solve. The one following, § 662, actually makes some use of the race. Because of its Rylean overtones, I believe § 661 is important enough for me to quote in spite of being in print. Ryle and Wittgenstein are reputed to have gone on a walking holiday in the summer of 1930, but I believe it more likely to have been in the autumn, just before the start of the Cambridge Michaelmas term, and to have been in the Lake District. [But see introduction - this is false.] Whenever it took place, I strongly suspect that Wittgenstein learnt as much from Ryle as Ryle did from him.
§ [661] / The comparison of physical occurrences and states like digestion, breathing, etc with psychological ones like thinking, feeling, willing etc. What I want to emphasise is precisely their incomparability. Rather, I should like to say, the comparable physical states would be [the Rylean]: rapidity of breathing, the irregularity of digestion. And these characterise the body's behaviour.
On page [89], dated 4.12.[46], we reach § 666, an expression of Wittgenstein's desire to justify his style of philosophy --- at least, if one inserts the word "merely" in translating it.
§ [666] / To what extent are we [merely] investigating the use of words? Don't we judge their use too? Don't we also say that this move is essential, that one inessential?
This is followed by a draft for the final paragraph of the Inv Preface, not all of it used, and revising the version in the Smythies typescript.
§ S - - - I should like to have written a good book, indeed a very good one. It hasn. t turned out like that; but the time is past . . . // . . . [alternative saying almost exactly the same].
The first entry of the following January comes on 7.1.47 on page [90] and expresses Wittgenstein's views on industrial civilisation. When Rhees edited Philosophische Bemerkungen he used as a Preface, anachronistically in my view, paragraphs written some months after Phil Bem was completed, and intended by Wittgenstein for a further book which he then found he was not quite ready for. Wittgenstein's philosophy was changing so rapidly at that time that a few months could be seriously misleading --- but in respect of industrial civilisation Wittgenstein's views only changed between 1930 and 1947 in so far as they had intensified.
§ S The apocalyptic view of the world is really that things do not repeat themselves. It is for example not senseless to believe that the scientific and technical era is the beginning of the end of humanity, that the idea of great progress is an illusion, just like the belief in the eventual knowledge of truth, [nor is it senseless to believe] that there is nothing good or valuable in scientific knowledge and that humanity, in striving for it, is heading for a fall. It is far from clear that that is not so.
The entry for 10.1.[47] consists of three censored lines. Then 17.1.[47] has
§ S The usefulness of philosophy. It says: "Why should that be so?" Thereby it sets a prejudice aside.
Wittgenstein then (I assume in that spirit) translates "Pain is a phenomenon that is given us in nature" and "The colour red is a phenomenon that is given us in nature" as "People sometimes have pains --- certain objects in our neighbourhood are red."
§§ 667 and 668 follow this and are followed by two undictated passages, the second of which, at the top of page [92], I take to task in my notes for sounding impressive but having little substance.
§ S The concept of a physical object. The concept of the I [of the Ego, to follow Freud's translators]. Of whom should we say that he didn't possess that concept?
§ S Someone who has different concepts from us does something different from us.
I ask if an Irish farmer who calls a bull calf a cow calf does something different with it. There is no doubt that this is a difference of concept. It comes from the fact that Irish has only one word for "calf" and "fawn", so that a calf has to be called a cow calf whatever its sex, and a fawn a deer calf.
At the bottom of the next page an undictated paragraph takes up a theme which, beginning here with § 668, reverts to earlier discussions of the experience of a meaning. It concerns an example which Wittgenstein had used in his lectures and which Bruce Hunt had had words with him about.
§ S I give someone an order using the word "weiche" [basically "give way"] in the meaning of Eisenbahnweiche [railway points, or a siding], but say "eggs" under my breath [as an adjective, "weich" means "soft"] --- in which meaning have I uttered the word? Or in a conversation I say, sighing, "time flies!" and continue under my breath "if you. ve nothing better to do" [both remarks in English]. It always seems as if one couldn't make the mutually exclusive moves of thought. So if one means the first words as a sigh, the second ones are left without a context. And if one thinks of being in a situation where the words are an order, and speaks them as a sigh, then this isn. t the sigh "Die Zeit vergeht!"
On copying this I commented that this was one of the worst jokes I had ever found and only in Wittgenstein's notebooks. No-one of my boyhood acquaintance had been so feeble minded as to make it. I also commented that by now he must have been told by Bruce Hunt that in German slang "Eier" meant "balls". It is astonishing that he did not know this, but Bruce described vividly his embarrassment on being told it, and his declaring that he would never have used the example in a lecture if he had known. It concerns a Wotan in a Rheingold performance who whispered to Erde, just before she had to sing "Weiche, Wotan, weiche!" [meaning "give way and let the gods have their gold"], "wie magst du Eier?", ie "how do you like eggs?"
The dictated paragraphs from § 668 to § 689 all follow this theme, with undictated paragraphs which, as I noted, "flog the same dead horse" (of meaning-experience), and then Bedeutungserlebnis gives way to general Erlebnisinhalt, and in particular pain.
On page [118] (dates have now been abandoned until the beginning of the next manuscript volume, MS 134), there is a puzzling rewriting of what came on the last date, 17.1.[47]. Science also asks "Why should it be so?", and thereby removes prejudices, while philosophy does the same with a subtle difference of emphasis which I simply cannot interpret.
On page [119] a return of Moore's paradox appears to be heralded, with the undictated
§ S What is more primary: "It is going to rain" or "I believe it is going to rain"?
and a form closer to the paradox comes on the next page, marked with approval but not dictated.
§ / How if someone said: "I know it won. t rain but I believe it will"?
Only, however, after many skirtings of the paradox, both dictated and undictated, does it come in quotation marks in its proper form as "It is raining and I don't believe it" on page [142], undictated, with the suggestion that the disbeliever might be observing something within himself that makes him believe that he doesn't believe. In the next entry, on page [143], this observed something is identified as "eine gewisse Unsicherheit". This long sequence of dictated and undictated paragraphs from page [119] to page [143] can be seen as a prelude to the Certainty notes. What Wittgenstein is doing here is applying to the concept of believing the style of analysis that he there applies to the concept of knowing.
At the foot of page [143], § 720 brings a change of subject, though the way is prepared for it by the above, asking in effect whether the world of consciousness is a space of [merely subjective] impressions. In treating this subject, § 721 on page [144] harks back to 1929, while § 723 on page [145] harks back to Wittgenstein. s early 1930s horror of being forced to embrace a theory. This had been anticipated on page [125] by the following undictated self-quotation in English from (presumably) a lecture.
§ S "What we do is the opposite of theorising". Theory dazzles [in German].
A remarkable number of rephrasings in §§ 721 and 723 suggest a degree of philosophical agony, but between them § 722 promises a family tree (Stammbaum) of psychological concepts with no corrections at all. A start is made with this ahead, on page [124] of MS 134, on 9.4.[47], while a more particular start is made with §§ 63 and 148 of Rem Ph Ps II (MS 136 pages 3 and 27-28).
The subjective experiences discussed when this new subject gets under way open with fear, but on page [151] §§ 734 and 735 are intriguing in discussing the subjective experience of lying. The experiences also include second thoughts or private reservations (Hintergedanken) --- see §§ 741 and 743 on pages [155] and [156].
I took schadenfreudlich pleasure in contradicting § 747 (on page [157]), which says that one cannot have toothacheful thoughts (as one can sorrowful ones). These refuting thoughts came to me when I heard, outside in my street, a travelling baker who had previously sold me six rich chocolate eclairs which I had greedily eaten in one go, inducing extreme toothache.
At the foot of page [158], with § 750, we move from experiences to the psychology of judgement --- including judgements about experiences. On page [174], one's consciousness of intention is introduced by comparing it with the consciousness of lying, in § 781, and intention is put under a Wittgenstein magnifying glass in § 788, on pages [180]-[181]. In copying this paragraph I suspected it contained a non sequitur. It claims that we can have doubts about other people's intentions but not about our own. A genuine expression of intention is one that turns out to be a prediction of what the person intending actually does. This implies that it might not so turn out. So I ask: what if we ourselves fail to do as we say we intend? For Wittgenstein, someone observing our behaviour must conclude that we were lying, which we do not need to conclude since we already know --- either what we were intending or that we were not really intending anything at all. To me, these cases include the possibility of not knowing our own intentions, while Wittgenstein takes for granted that if we have intentions we know them infallibly, and if we haven't we know that infallibly too. One would think that it was clear to him from his private notes that in between acknowledging one's intentions honestly and lying about them there is a very fuzzy and perplexing region of not knowing them. Of course, it may be a fault in my own psychology that I agree entirely that we must know if we are lying but not at all that we must know what our intentions are.
At the top of page [184] there is an undictated entry which typifies what can be so perplexing about sensations. Wave a finger from left to right and then from right to left. We know which is which, and we sense something, but can we seriously say that we can distinguish a difference of sensation between the two?
The date 27.2.[47] comes on page [188], the first date for some while, and the first entry is an undictated paragraph about Socrates, which is not entirely convincing but certainly deserves to be quoted.
§ S Socrates, who always reduces the Sophist to speechlessness --- does he rightly reduce him to speechlessness? --- To be sure, the Sophist doesn't know what he believes he knows; but that is no triumph for Socrates. It can't be either "Look! --- You don't know!" nor, triumphantly, "So we none of us know!"
¶ For I don't want to think in order just to lead myself, or even the other fellow, out of unclarity. I am not attempting to understand anything: only to see that I don't understand it yet.
This is followed by § 799, with which we enter a region of philosophy of psychology which flows well and can be followed in the remainder of Rem Ph Ps I, with only occasional need to refer to undictated passages. MS 133 ends on its page [190] with the date 28.2.[47] and MS 134 starts on a left hand page [1] on 28.2.47. These bracketed numbers are of course my own, and I do not know what the Wren have done about them.
There is a long undictated and rather pessimistic passage running from page [3] to page [5] which remarks that most mathematics is carried out without any philosophical problem, so why should philosophers try to set mathematicians right? This query spreads to asking whether any philosophical clarification is worth while. The date 2.3.[47] follows, with § 804, and the philosophy of psychology is comfortably under way. My comments and quotations will from now on be more a matter of what has caught my eye than what is philosophically important.
On page [9] of MS 134 is the first of two remarks about wisdom --- it is the cold, grey ash which smothers the fire. The second, ahead, where I shall quote it, is more polished and literary.
On pages [19]-[20], on 5.3.[47], there is an anticipation of the very last remark in the Certainty notes, with "trance" in place of "dream":
§ [818] / Where in logic does it say that an assertion may not be made in a trance?
On pages [21]-[23], §§ 821 and 822 bring a return of what I have called 'skirting the Moore paradox', and on pages [23]-[24] there is this separated pair of undictated paragraphs, the second dated 6.3.[47]:
§ S "It is raining but I don't want to admit it."
§ S "It is raining, but I tell myself it isn't raining."
On 7.3.[47] on page [25] there are two similar remarks in quotation marks, followed by the suggestion that these utterances might go with splitting one's personality. The second entry for this date, also undictated, is
§ S / In a deeper sense we really are pursuing grammar. What success that will have, and whether it will have any at all, how could one know?
On page [49] on 19.3.[47], there is the wordless thought that I quoted in "45 Minutes" as being more telling than one given in Inv § 330 --- actually, the second of two examples given in that paragraph.
On page [58] on 19.3.[47] there comes § 865, with above it two drawings of the top half of the duck-hare's head, both with dotted eyes. Mis-spelling "hallucination", Wittgenstein asks what can be stranger than seeing a point as having direction. On page [68] on 25.3.[47], in § 880, he asks how it is possible at all, and I took the opportunity to break from my copying task and examine an illustration in a book in St David's College library which answered his query perfectly. It was of a Greek vase on which Apollo was baring himself to a Muse, "who looks in wonder at . . . but no, it was at his head she looked; not discovered by inspecting the point of her pupil but by putting one. s specs on and seeing the context of the whole eye".
In § 880 Wittgenstein used the German verb "blicken" (to look or glance), and while letting my hair down about Apollo. s admiring Muse this verb reminded me of "old Oxford days when pretentious philosophers straight from Cambridge laid it on thick that the difference between seing the world as just the world or as being created by God was a difference of blick, presented as an English noun. Just like the use of the verb . probe. taken from . probieren. , to test, but as if it was what a dentist or a surgeon does with a probe". --- Or so I wrote in 1995, but if I had probed my own memory better I should have remembered that the word was "blik", presented as an Afrikaans noun by Dick Hare in a commentary on Antony Flew's Theology and Falsification. This was printed, Flew tells me, in the October 1950 number of University, which I may well have read, but my memory is of hearing Hare speak, presumably at a meeting of the Jowett Society on the same subject. Hare was certainly not pretentious. He contributed to Ryle's 1948 class on the Tractatus. And he had little opportunity to go to Cambridge, having been made a Fellow of Balliol immediately after taking his finals.
On 2.4.[47] on page [83] there is another reference (§ 895) to the family tree of psychological phenomena, already proposed in § 722.
An undictated paragraph on page [90] suggests that someone (presumably ignorant of bicycles) seeing Wittgenstein pedalling a bike could wonder whether he was moving the pedals or the pedals were moving him, leading him to say that the voluntary-involuntary distinction did not coincide with desired or not desired. ("gewünscht, oder nicht gewünscht"). This led me to remember riding a fixed-wheel bicycle as a boy, my feet strapped to the pedals, down a steep hill (River Hill near Sevenoaks). I wondered if Wittgenstein had ever done this --- it would have given him an indubitable example of a movement that was ungewollt but erwünscht (he changes his wording).
On page [117] on 7.4.[47], there is a second reference, undictated, to Lewis Carroll's stopped clock that tells the time correctly twice a day. This also mentions Ramsey, and 'functions in extension', but not his theory of identity.
On pages [119] and [120] there are two coded paragraphs which are not Cornell-censored. The second reads:
§ The deep tragedy of human life is the fact that people talk past each other (B. [uncoded for "Ben"] I. [coded for "Richards"]). They are so to speak created skew to each other. No wonder if nothing results but topsy-turviness between them.
On page [126] there is what might have been meant as a brief start with the twice-promised family tree of psychology:
§ S The verbs and nouns of psychology (seeing, hearing, fearing, hoping, believing; fear, will, horror, belief, wish) are so very misleading. One must again and again leave them for a description of behaviour and its occasions, in order not to be deceived by grammar. s surface as to the nature of language games.
On page [133] a partly dictated paragraph begins, § 932, which superficially resembles the final entry of the Certainty notes, but (unlike the short anticipation quoted above) the undictated opening gives it a somewhat different point.
§ One does to be sure sometimes say "Aren't I dreaming?" or such like, but no-one is seriously in doubt for a minute whether he is awake. Good --- but [and with a / mark § 932 begins].
On page [141], just above the date 14.4.[47] and underneath a Cornell censorship slip, we find
§ S Is it only I who can't found a school, or can't a philosopher ever [found one]? I can't found a school because I don't really want to be imitated. At least, not by people who publish articles in philosophical journals.
A somewhat similar remark is written, undictated, on pages [145] and [146], just before the date 21.4.[47].
§ S Nothing seems to me less probable than that by reading me a scientist or mathematician could be seriously influenced in his method of work. (To this extent my warnings are like the notices in English railway stations "Is your journey really necessary?" As if anyone who read that would say to himself "On second thoughts, no" [the latter also in English].) To join battle in this field one must have fighters armed quite differently from any I can raise. [After this some rather tangled German expresses a most tangled thought as to what his indirect effect might be.]
On page [150] under the date 25.4.[47] the 'motto' of Inv is written, identical to what is printed except that Nestroy's title "Der Schützling" is also given.
On page [154], dated 28.4.[47], there is a further undictated remark about his (still to be achieved) psychological family tree: it will bring clarity to various conceptual difficulties.
An analogy that readers of these manuscript volumes (or indeed of my excerpts from them) might find only too appropriate comes on page [155].
§ S The book is full of life --- not like a human being but like an ant heap.
(Wittgenstein deserves credit for the honesty of this remark. His aim in slowly constructing Pt II could be called a wish to transform the ant heap of his notes into something with human life.)
On page [165] (there are no more dates until the beginning of the next volume) there is an undictated reference to Darwin, a propos of love and hate behaviour in animals. I take this to mean that Wittgenstein had read The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals --- which he also deserves credit for.
At the top of page [179] there is a second reference to Weisheit.
§ S "Wisdom is grey." Life and religion, on the other hand, are rich in colour.
(Clearly, this echoes Goethe's
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum
in Faust.)
MS 134 ends, with my fallible page counting, on page [182], and is listed by Cornell as running from February 1947 to June 1947. MS 135 opens on 12.7.47 and on a left hand page, which I have numbered [1]. The pessimistic opening note which I have already quoted could well have been written after the early days of August, when, presumably, Wittgenstein left Cambridge and began his dictation (thereby refuting his own pessimism).
On page [18] (the date possibly 15.7.[47]) § 1007 is written, mentioning vowel colour and drawing my comment:
The colour of vowels is an insanity which has afflicted I think two French poets and Wittgenstein and no-one else, ever. [But I believe it is now well established that the insanity is much wider spread than that.]
On page [23] § 1012 is written, mentioning retinal processes and drawing my comment that this is probably another reference to Rushton. s researches.
On page [44] there is the full date 19.7.47, with § 1028, but there is no indication that this indicates any kind of fresh start.
On pages [49]-[50] § 1036 is written, apparently relating aspect to unarticulated thought.
On page [53] § 1039 is written, a draft for the Verwirrung und Öde. section of Pt II that the editors thought important enough to transfer to the end of it.
On pages [104]-[105], 27.7.[47], there is an undictated entry on which I have made a personal note.
§ S "But I can see that my visual impression is three dimensional". "But I can feel the connection of fear with what inspires fear." (Köhler.) How do we compare our feelings in order to know that we really all feel the same?
This brought back to me a memory of Isaiah Berlin, who in a tutorial made fun "of a student who said he had seen a causal connection, but by George, anyone who has been frightened at seeing a snapping dog has felt a causal connection".
On page [109] on 28.7.[47] there is an undictated entry (followed by a related one on the next page) which encourages me to believe that the 1930 walking holiday with Ryle took them across Striding Edge on the way to Helvellyn. [But I have explained both in my website introduction and in my book how I discovered this to be false.]
§ S Life is like a path on a mountain ridge; to right and left slippery slopes down which you slide irresistably in one direction or the other. Time and again I see people slide and say "How could anyone help himself there!" And that means "denying free will". That [denial] is a standpoint that expresses itself in this belief [in the absence of free will]. But it isn't a scientific belief, it has nothing to do with scientific convictions.
§ S Denying responsibility means not training people to responsibility.
If I have understood Wittgenstein's stance on free will as he states it here, it comes close to Berlin's, that belief in human responsiblility entails belief in free will --- the subtle difference being that in Berlin's view people brainwashed by determinism would still have responsibility in the eyes of those who have not been brainwashed.
The date 3.8.[47] comes on page [139] with two undictated entries. I quote the first in order to add my own comment on it, and the second for its anticipation of an image that comes in the opening section of Pt II (with "carpet" rather than "tapestry").
§ S A: "It's raining." I: "It's raining?" A: "Yes, it's raining." The question expresses 'incredulous astonishment'. Different language games with the same sentence. [Myself: "Perhaps it just expresses English conversational habits."]
§ S I look at a tapestry. Its pattern strikes me at first as an irregular whirl of patches; after a short examination I find my way; it is a system. One can say that I first see it as disorganised, then as organised.
The date 11.10.[47] comes on page [140], and one can assume that Wittgenstein is back in Cambridge unprofessorially (though I assume he still had his Fellowship and was entitled to a room in College). §§ 1126-1137 still remain to be written and dictated for TS 229. Following the last of these there is the remark "[Bis dahin diktiert]" on page [146]. § 1 of the new typescript, TS 232, comes on page [147]. In between are three undictated paragraphs. The first is heavily crossed out and overwritten, and I leave readers of the Bergen CD edition to decipher it, but I quote the other two for general interest and for a word which gives me an opportunity to extend the English philosophical vocabulary.
§ S I am the inventor of certain artificial hand-holds which clarify discusion; so I am like someone who might have invented new, more perspicuous kinds of book-keeping.
§ S Could one speak of a 'parasite experience'? In other words say that meaning-experience is a parasitical experience, a parasite upon the process of understanding?
Wittgenstein's term in the opening question is "Schmarotzerlebnis", a Schmarotz being a parasite, sponger, drone, known to hippies as a drongo, a word not yet found in dictionaries. To be more honest (and in the spirit of his Kunstgriffe) Wittgenstein should have spoken of parasitical expressions, bringing his idea close to one of Austin's.
A date 8.12.[47] follows on page [149], with § 5. The last date in this notebook is 18.12[47], written on the unruled left hand end inner cover page, and its last dictated paragraph is § 57.
MS 136 opens on the same date, written as 8.12.47, with § 58. Numerals are now provided by the printer of the stationery book, and the same is true of MSS 137-138. All three are ledger-volumes, with vertical accounting lines spread across double pages, so that there are two pages to each numeral. To the best of my memory Wittgenstein had not used this kind of accounting volume since (some of) his 1914-1917 notes towards the Tractatus. I will leave until a supplement [please now read for this "my book"] my own notes on these three volumes, Wittgenstein's Bände Q, R and S, including, from the last section of MS 135, my account of the seven undictated paragraphs on Bedeutungserlebnis and Bedeutungsblindheit which I believed Wittgenstein had regrets about.
Meanwhile, I end with a biographical point. Wittgenstein's brief return to Cambridge in October 1947 coincided with Iris Murdoch's arrival there, hoping to attend his lectures, only to find that he had resigned his professorship. She told me of this disappointment in 1948 when I first met her, and when I asked her to confirm this (alarmed by the number of respectable authorities who had listed her as one of his lecture pupils) she replied that she had at least had a philosophical conversation with him. Her journals, I am now told by her biographer, Peter Conradi, reveal that she had actually had two. I am sure they were much more valuable to her than his final year of lectures would have been.
TP Uschanov of Helsinki has e-mailed me to point out that according to Monk, Roy Fouracre did not return from the Far East until February 1947. The person I have come to call Cavalry Twill, and still insist was Fouracre, might alternatively have been Barry Pink, and on pages 567 - 568 Monk gives the style of his conversations with Wittgenstein in a manner that corresponds exactly to what Cavalry Twill told me. Moreover, Monk quotes a coded remark of 18.8.46, which is a mere reformulation of the one quoted by me from 22.7.46 and refers to "B" (for "Ben", ie uncoded). Uschanov also points out that many passages I have taken to be unpublished are quoted either by Monk or by von Wright in Vermischte Bemerkungen. He also quotes a letter from Wittgenstein to Moore of 3.12.46 comparing Austin unfavourably with Price (in respect of Moral Science Club meetings). This is letter M 51 in Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore, and is very revealing --- but I stick to my own description of Austin as "courteous and reasonable". I am very grateful to Uschanov for these corrections.