It seems people suppose Wittgenstein had no deep concerns about political, social, or religious strife. At least, they believe, once he got into philosophy his concerns about what was going on in the world were minimal. That is, he felt no urge to do anything about these kinds of conflict. He felt no desire to participate or to make some meaningful efforts in the world’s disputes, except for philosophical ones.
One piece of evidence that might be used to support this supposition was the fact that he didn’t seem to write anything about the wars that went on during his lifetime. He didn’t write much about what was happening in Europe with his own country, Austria, or the places he grew up in Vienna.
Another piece of evidence would seem to be the fact that his family was rich, but instead of using his inherited wealth to “make a difference” in European politics, culture, art, or its religious life, he gave all his money away. Granted, he seems to have given it away to worthy causes, but he had here no thought that he could personally make a difference in resolving disputes.
Another piece of evidence that suggests he had no interest in strife was the fact that in philosophy, he didn’t have much interest in those areas of philosophy that traditionally involved one in public disputes, such as moral or political philosophy. Instead, he focused on logic and language. This kind of interest strikes many as “geeky” and makes it seem Wittgenstein was interested primarily in exorcising his “inner demons” and not concerned at all in what might make a difference in the tragic events of his lifetime.
I would not be surprised if someone would find some box of letters or a diary shown to include Wittgenstein’s private thoughts about the political, social, or religious disputes of his time. He must have had thoughts about the issue of what was happening to European Jewry, about WW I and the fate of Austria, why people think about suicide, the rise of Fascism in Germany and Austria, and so on. I imagine people suppose that Wittgenstein focused on logic and language, not because he was uninterested in these issues, but because he felt his talents were best used in these fundamental issues in philosophy, and he chose not to distract himself from making progress in these areas by being a political, social, or religious dilettante.
I want to make the case for another interpretation of Wittgenstein. I think strife was very much on Wittgenstein’s mind. I think he wanted very much to make some difference in the disputes that he saw raging in his world. I suspect most everything he did in going into philosophy and into the seemingly abstruse philosophical fields of logic and language was because he believed it was just in these fundamental issues in philosophy, in providing some clarity and resolution, that he could make the most difference in those disputes.
I take Wittgenstein to have supposed that the primary influence of philosophy on our lives, and our lives in its politics, sociology, and its religions, is to have persuaded people that our lives are described by the great metaphors. So, from Socrates we’ve learned that our lives are like the lives of his cave dwellers. Our lives are described by the Allegory of the cave. We learn from Hume and others that our lives are like those of Zombies driven by our insatiable hungers or the commands of our voodoo masters. Or from Marx, and others, that we are like kids on a playground run by a bully. It is the fact that we have adopted these metaphors as descriptions of our lives and the character of these metaphors that have, on Wittgenstein’s view, brought is to such tragedy and suffering in the world.
It was Wittgenstein’s project to somehow undermine the credibility these pictures have in our understanding of the world. It was his thought that though philosophy gave people these theories about the world, that philosophy could not give any good justification for them. It was his thought in the Tractatus that these pictures were only mysticisms or cleverly deceptive truisms. In the Investigations, these pictures or theories were examples where “language was on holiday.” In On Certainty these philosophical ideas were generated when we were not paying enough attention to “assertability conditions.” In all of his work, his goal was to show that the theories or pictures that stood as the basis of strife and disputes in the world were themselves unjustified and should not cause any such disputation.
Some philosophers talk about there being two distinct Wittgensteins. The first is found in the Tractatus. The second in the Investigations. In these two writings, supposedly, Wittgenstein develops two different accounts of logic and language. There is not much to connect these two Wittgensteins except that the later is about how one should reject the former. I’m arguing that though he did reject the Tractatus when he wrote the Investigations, and was likely rejecting both as he was developing On Certainty, all these works shared the underlying goal of undermining the credibility of philosophical theories as the basis of political, social, and religious strife.
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