There was always something tragic as well as touching about Ludwig’s self-willed, hermetic retreats. A rootless fascination with the sense of place, the paradox of all outsiders. Desperate to get away from the cloistered, petty world of academe, Wittgenstein took his Cambridge sabbatical in rustic Ireland.

The gray-green misty spray of the North Atlantic carried far inland and with it, the salty atmospherics of the wild sea…his safety valve. White combers unleashed their explosive fury against the craggy black basalt, as they have done long before humankind first trod the Earth. Awed by the elemental force of the ocean no less than his own deep yearning, he felt uplifted, as if a higher power were present after all. At such times, he could almost believe.

He lived undisturbed as he wished, alone on the windswept moorlands. His self-styled ‘hideaway’, a simple stone-and-daub, white plastered farmhouse came with a slate-shingled roof, groundwater-well and open-hearth chimney. Set off to one side, was the clay walled outhouse and pit latrine, with the dried peat stacked against it, under cover, ready for the fireplace. Chores kept him busy, leaving little time for his perennial restlessness. Bathing meant filling a portable tin tub with warm water and much splashing about, medieval style, that strangely enough appealed to his sense of modernity’s lost innocence.

Daybreak would find him on the flagstone porch, propped against the leeward wall on a rocking-style wicker-chair, wrapped in a woolen duvet against the chill. The landscape was drenched with dew and smothered in a gauzy shroud. Black coffee in hand, he waited impatiently for the mist to lift. A vague shape loomed up eerily, menacingly, formless. Never one to back away, he braced himself, hair standing on end, raising his fists, ready to face whatever.

With a single piercing bleat, a toothy head bobbed up through the swirl, a surreal cartoon. Nothing but a scrawny, bearded old goat, browsing contentedly on clumps of damp hairgrass. He blinked, wide-eyed for a moment, surprised to see that his hand was trembling. He shook his head — as he took stock of the absurdity — laughing so hard it set off a forlorn chorus of bleating. A ripple of release coursed through him, unexpectedly, the residual of months of pent-up tedium. For that perfect moment at least, he no longer felt apart from the world.

As it turned out, the goat was his only erstwhile companion for the many weeks to come… but sorely in want of a familial name. He christened it henceforth as ‘Franz Joseph,’ with apologies, for the bearded old emperor. Emperor Franz Joseph who had sent him off to the Great War…and his comrades to their untimely deaths.

Chilling winds tugged at his coverall jacket and scarf as he strode briskly along the scrubby ridges of the Galway fiords, seagulls wheeling and soaring on the updraughts. Offering some relief, ancient paths wended down from the windswept ridges through thickets of thorny gorse and briar, past the wetland peat bogs, opening in turn to a countryside of waving heather and walled pastures. His distinctive loping gait, however ungainly in appearance, was ideal for his long, grueling treks. Thoughts came and went, swooping back and forth with the screeching gulls as he trod onwards. The hardbitten, dark shadows of misanthropy one minute followed in the next labored breath, by the giddy lightness of humanism.

He asked himself whether these impressive words were at best simply different scraps from the same basic idea? Just arbitrary sounds paired together as syllables to make up ‘words’, supposedly imbued with profound meaning? They rang hollow to him — words that collapsed in upon themselves — lacking any meaningful connection to his own lived life.

Most bewildering of all, he realized, was the straightforward question of how a singular consciousness can examine its own intimate Self… inasmuch as the Self is both subject and object at the same moment in time? Is it really possible to arbitrarily suspend a natural defensive instinct to expose an unpleasant if private truth? Judge and Defense, all rolled up together in a confusing package! If so, then how could he trust his own thinking?

Philosophy be damned with its ham-fisted efforts at the ineffable! He stood quietly, his head spinning. His push for ‘something’ outside of himself, he realized in a flash, had become a kind of willed blindness. Despite all his efforts to follow his thoughts, he found himself down a rabbit-hole…instead of perhaps, accepting come what may.

What he had desperately craved was not effete metaphysics, but quite simply, space and openness, rawness to the senses. He paused. It was the emptiness now for which he had always longed, but also, wretchedly, that which he had always most feared. Nothingness, he once heard an Oriental visitor say, is anything but nothing. Without warning, the floodgates broke. Nightmarish images sprang from nowhere, unbidden, arcing across his consciousness. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Not for the first time, he saw all too plainly those trusting young faces gazing reproachfully out at him…gone, mouldering away in the killing fields of foreign lands. Face after tortured face, they had come to haunt him again, all the more as time passed, leaving the same wrenching emotion. He would remain detached for days — sentiment was always his weakness.

The ‘Lost Generation’ they call them, conveniently, lost and forsaken, he sighed…until gruesomely, the ploughshare turns up yellowed long bones in the furrow. His lofty heroism was nothing other than a mindless, reflexive action that sanctified murder, turning God-fearing men into ghoulish devils. Once bloodied, there was no exorcism, no priestly undoing. The bodies lie where they fell, buried in artillery craters, but the madness remained. Better to be a wooden soldier, he sniggered crazily to himself, who goes about his workmanlike savagery having no interior life.

‘Shell shock,’ they had told him, then later, ‘a nervous breakdown,’ as if naming was everything, a bookish cure no less. Job well done. Yet his faraway gaze — the ‘thousand-yard stare,’ — lingered still. Recovery can only go so far. There were always the cliffs of course, suspended between sea and sky, silent and haunting, waiting, with their promise of emptiness forever.

Each week he made the provisioning trip to Ballyloughen: an antique Morris pickup truck came with the farmhouse. The Gaelic villagers, curious at first, were left puzzled by his gruff silence and vague, otherworldly demeanor — his cultured Viennese accent didn’t help matters. For his part, the local brogue was too thick and coarse for him to fathom other than an occasional word. Besides, chatty had never been his thing.

Word had already spread. Fed by a native cussedness, the pub-gossip flourished, warning of a crazed foreigner on the moors, who held himself aloof, conversing only with God. With frothy Guinness tankards in hand, sodden old cronies swapped ever-wilder stories in hushed undertones, adding the ‘Sign of the Cross’ as if blessing their own words. Fathers warned their ‘littluns’ that the mysterious stranger was really a shapeshifting angel of death, a case of spine-chilling folklore come to life.

In the land of Banshees, Leprechauns, and Saint Patrick — a potpourri of Christian and Druidic beliefs — here was a strangeness they had never before encountered. He found out later, from the children, that he was watched. After shouting ungodly blasphemies against the Almighty, it was said that the foreigner would then humbly fling up his hands to heaven. In search of forgiveness of sorts went the local rumors…or else, an asylum straitjacket. As with many colorful rumors, they are not without a sliver of truth. Even the burly peat-diggers were locking their doors at night.

There was always the bountiful stillness of his morning coffee. The blustery offshore winds had abated overnight, leaving an unnatural calmness. Without thinking, he would begin rocking back and forth in his quiet, measured way, chin cupped in his palm, a blissful emptiness settling upon him. A sense of the irreducible, which by default, came with its own unique agency. Dependable as ever, Franz Joseph stood busily ruminating on his cud... as the first feint rays of the sun rose over the porch, dispersing the blanket of mist, heralding a bright, new day.

Time passed, chores fell into a natural routine, days and weeks blended together in a cyclical existence; even his habitual overthinking became stale and fell away, of no practical use…and once again, solitude had worked its healing sorcery. He lived as himself, forgetful of his Self.

A respite, but no less for that — belying a simple, sad truth.

***

Always lurking in the wings, lo and behold, the uncanny makes a backstage entrance. Scion of a large Jewish-Catholic family, uber-rich, popular and talented, young Ludwig attended the respected Realschule state middle school in Linz, Austria, circa 1904. In a twist of historicity — when ‘fact is stranger than fiction’ — Adolf Hitler, later Chancellor of Nazi Germany and Fuhrer of the Third Reich, also attended the Realschule school in Linz at the same time, though two grades apart. So goes the old chestnut, a thrice told tale.

They were both almost exactly the same age of fourteen years. Most strikingly, a faded-yellow school photograph shows the two students, curiously enough, only a few rows away. In fact, they couldn’t be further apart. One at the top of the class, privileged and feted, the other dirt-poor and resentful, relegated to the bottom, wearing the dunce’s hat. Moreover, Hitler’s factotum father unexpectedly died, leaving him bereft, with only his mother and younger sister. Whether by choice or circumstance, Hitler finished at the school so that the two students were together for only a little over a year. On the other hand, it can be fairly argued that Hitler was also at that crucial developmental stage when flighty impressions become crystallized in long-term memory. Could the Holocaust in part, be a retribution for fixated childhood wounds?

At any rate, the question of a meaningful association between Wittgenstein and Hitler, philosopher and dictator, remains a moot point. Unlikely as cliques go, Jew and Gentile, though it should be said that Wittgenstein was unduly attracted to quirky types. A watershed moment in time, changing the course of history, or else an inflated half-forgotten footnote? Tongue in cheek, one cannot help but wonder? A coincidence, however improbable, which still manages to conjure up all manner of counterfactual storytelling? Word-of-mouth has it that they were once friends, who then quarreled and parted ways. Even if this is true, every statistics candidate knows with a groan: correlation is not causality!

***

But we are ahead of ourselves. The story begins as the Austrian-born Ludwig Wittgenstein, winsome, dashing, and wealthy, yet nevertheless given to spiritual matters, did not fit the much-anticipated profile of moribund scholars. Impeccably dressed in a silken tuxedo, pink bow tie, and pressed tailored trousers, his flashiness would not be out of place amid the baccarat rooms of Monte Carlo. Identity politics aside, it was difficult to believe he was the rising star of the new school of analytic philosophy, fresh from Vienna. The mop of unruly black hair didn’t help.

Such an incongruous presentation gave a moment’s pause for the staid members of the University welcoming committee, dressed in their ceremonial gowns. Here then, lie the beginnings of a long and troubled relationship. Cambridge professors were customarily an imposing lot, stately and rarefied if more than a little bumptious. Ludwig was neither.

Heavy in years, the faculty members came loaded down with the metaphysics of Aristotle: opaque meanings that invited so many misunderstandings, not to mention wars, down through the ages. For Wittgenstein, philosophy, psychology, and precise language were all intertwined. When words are tossed around loosely, matters can easily go awry in so many ways that makes it impossible to spot the error. Recalling Wittgenstein’s religious leanings — especially his wartime epiphanies — the faculty took heart that despite appearances to the contrary, he was really one of them.

Such reassurances were short-lived however, presaged by the rigor of his formidable ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’. The work was painstakingly compiled from discarded slips of wastepaper, no less. Each precious fragment was used to jot down a passing thought, the embryo of an idea that only much later, took the form of a fully-fledged ‘proposition.’ At the time, Wittgenstein was a Lieutenant, much decorated for bravery, in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, during The Great War. He struggled day-to-day to survive amidst the muddy, putrid trenches; the mass carnage leaving permanent scars on his stability. Helpfully, Wittgenstein sought refuge in his religious leanings: he records several ‘spiritual epiphanies’ during his service on the Russian front, and again during his nine months as a wounded prisoner-of-war on the Italian peninsula.

It would be hard to imagine a more inauspicious venue for any writing whatsoever, much less a ground-breaking philosophical treatise. The fragmentary origins of this work — scribbled quickly in the lull between artillery shellings using any available scraps — reflected Wittgenstein’s chaotic experience of the war. No surprise that most of his numbered propositions are compressed and disjoined. Inevitably, the Tractatus acquired the reputation of a ‘philosophically dense’ work.

Wittgenstein himself commented — forever the skeptic — that the piece is dedicated ‘to the idea of ineffable insight.’ An unanswerable insight which seemingly cannot be expressed in words: a case of philosophy turned back on itself?

Harmless ramblings indeed, muttered the grey-haired Cambridge academics, but tolerable…not beyond the pale.

Then came the inevitable tipping point. Wittgenstein’s revolutionary views on human language — hammered out amid a conflagration of death, disease, and filth — at once raised the hackles of suspicion with the conservative dons. His “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language” sealed the judgement.

Wittgenstein proposed that words came fraught with hidden deceptions and misleading patterns of response, inside which we live out our lives; that the world is girded by the relations between such patterns, rather than the normal, everyday world of objects. We all live by such inlaid responses tied to language, said Wittgenstein, as much as we mistakenly believe that we are free individuals.

Despite the setbacks, he nonetheless took up his appointment as a Lecturer and Fellow of Trinity College. In keeping with his eccentric reputation, Wittgenstein held his regular tutorials in his sparsely furnished chambers — with the minimalism of a monk — devoid of shades, book stacks, Victorian artwork, leatherback club chairs, desk, and other professorial kitsch. The room was as non-scholastic as he could possibly make it. The single exception was a massive, shiny black Underwood typewriter perched conspicuously on a parlor table, as if to underline his ambivalence with words. Otherwise, he would sprawl languidly in one of several deck chairs, glib and voluble, peppering his student circle with questions, prodding and teasing, as they gathered around him.

For students familiar with the dull formalities of a classic tutorial, the close intimacy of the private setting made for a heady mix, surreal yet stimulating. If the chatter became chaotic, Ludwig’s arched eyebrow made for a bemused pause, followed when necessary, by a silent, withering scowl. Introverted, yet capable of great charm, Wittgenstein remained a baffling mystery for many; his placid, measured voice exuding an ineffable authority that held listeners spellbound.

***

Along with a chest full of medals, the war had left other less attractive residuals: a shadowy side he struggled to keep under wraps but left him prone to periodic meltdowns. Whether blind luck or divine providence, Wittgenstein somehow survived the deadly calculus of artillery barrages, the sharp crack of sniper fire, the rat-a-tat clatter of Vickers machine guns, and most dreaded of all, the gruesome bayonet charges. He recalled absentmindedly picking pieces of pink flesh — once a handsome young subaltern, now shredded by mortar shrapnel — from his muddy-grey uniform!

The austere ‘Tractatus’, born from his jumble of random shards, slowly took shape as a kind of therapy. Wittgenstein turned inwards, withdrawing into the realm of the intellect, a world of words and the language of civilization — what was meant by the subjective morality of ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ ‘right’ or ‘wrong’? Time and again, he occupied his thoughts with philosophical conundrums, far removed from the unspeakable horrors of the outer world that otherwise filled his senses. Was it his sodden uniform that chaffed, leaving painful pustules, the unremitting stench of everyday existence, or even more subtly, the sheer tedium of waiting for the next onslaught? What started as a useful distraction when one was needed, gathered momentum, until it became an end in itself.

A case can be made perhaps, that Wittgenstein would not have become a philosopher but for the primal ordeal of war?  The overarching question then, is whether unfathomable death and suffering can in the right hands also be a wellspring for lively creativity, completing the paradox? Consider the literary genre of ‘war poets’ which is well-respected, enough to fill a small library — Rupert Brooks, Wilfred Owen, and Ivor Gurney to name but a few. Then why not ‘war philosophers’ who are surely shaped by the same titanic forces?

Indeed, one could argue that surrounded by death on an industrial scale, such mass bloodshed pushed Wittgenstein’s thinking about what it means to be fully alive? Every day in the foxhole is, existentially, lived on borrowed time. For better or worse, war clarifies what it means to be alive, making peace look pallid. Admittedly, his latent talents were always present, but who is to say what life direction they may have otherwise taken?

In the aftermath of the war, shunning all company, Wittgenstein slipped into a profound self-hatred, culminating in a nihilistic depression… which returned in bitter episodes throughout his life. Strangely enough, he declared that, however savage and brutal the war became, it nonetheless “had saved my life.” One not inconsequential detail, yet easily overlooked, is that of the ‘the family curse,’ or so he frames it — in the course of which three of his brothers ended their lives in suicide. As a frontline soldier however, he fought against the odds merely to continue breathing, pared down to the rudiments of daily survival. This seems to have had the inverse effect of valuing his life — as a counter to his dark moods and perhaps, the family blood-inheritance. If so, a steep price was paid. The Devil will have his due, one way or another.

Was there a reason lurking behind his longevity, he asked himself testily, when so many others had not been so ‘lucky’? Lucky, be damned! Their life had reached its due finality, done, and settled, while somehow, he was left behind still floundering with his inner war — angry one minute, then guilty the next.

***

The sense of teetering on a cliff’s edge, white knuckling for self-control, never left Wittgenstein. There always remained a side of him prone to explosive outbursts of anger, infrequent but nonetheless impressive. Not least is that unguarded, legendary scene in which he ‘chased’ after Karl Popper, a visiting philosopher, with a fireside poker…in truth, taking only a few menacing steps forward, waving the poker in mock-theatre… before dropping it loudly, a clanging exclamation, followed by his mocking laugh. A startled Popper stomped off in disgust, to be ushered back to his hotel. Doing no harm, it would seem…apart from the uproar that followed.

Everyone more or less agreed with the essential story: Popper was on a seminar tour accompanied by an entourage of journalists to garner publicity. Rushed for time, he had brusquely waved off Wittgenstein’s scheduled rebuttal. Popper spoke with the moral authority of a man used to having his own way…as if shooing away a pestering child. There could be no inkling of what was to follow.

Such an unwarranted breach of civility that was too much for the soldierly Wittgenstein. The fuse had been lit. His mercurial demon burst forth, across the room:

“Whenever someone answers, ‘Well now, that’s a great question for next time,’ it just means they don’t have a clue!”  

A common riposte of hecklers looking to get an easy laugh. On this occasion however, it came loaded with a sardonic edge that was deeply personal, felt by everyone present. Quietness suffused the gallery as if time itself was suspended. Someone laughed nervously, then everyone laughed with a gathering force, cracking up, until just as quickly, it petered out with a final snort. Popper for his part would have lost nothing by simply brushing the provocation aside. Instead, he was taken aback, huffing and puffing, oddly unaware of appearances…deciding finally to cut Wittgenstein short with a curt dismissal. Hubris is the point at which vanity becomes self-defeating.

Under normal circumstances, hostilities should have drawn to a close with the ritual chest-beating, both parties having manfully stood their ground. Alas, the decorated war veteran — not given to public snubs — took matters to the next level, snatching the poker in a deft sleight of hand, as cameras flashed…capturing the historical absurdity. Any putative efforts at decorum were instantly stripped away. It never occurred to Popper that anyone might find him mildly ridiculous.

The audience, and later the entire world, were enthralled at the comedic spectacle… played out, in a strange twist, at the Cambridge Moral Science Club. It’s not hard to see how Wittgenstein, idealistic to a fault, felt aghast at Popper’s blatant self-absorption. The hoary question of who started the fracas is still a matter of debate, though there is little doubt on who prevailed. But still, matters didn’t finish there.

Much of what passed for critical debate in academe was at that time a thinly veiled attempt to cower the other party into submission and, eventually, even professorial exile. Cambridge was no exception to such scurrilous personal attacks: insidious forces were already gathering against Wittgenstein and his ‘outrageous’ ideas, not to mention his recent erratic behavior. As it turned out, he had in the meantime become an overnight ‘sensation,’ albeit begrudgingly, with the student body — that rare thing, a celebrity academic …eventually interviewed in the London tabloids. Not only did Wittgenstein’s newfound status leave his rivals fuming but also made him virtually untouchable.

While philosophers at heart may be no different from anyone else, yet readers are inexorably drawn, out of natural curiosity, to the human side of their esoteric lives. This is especially the case when philosophers have well-publicized spates — readers are reassured that “they’re just like us after all!” In the end, the overblown affair proved nothing except perhaps, the ubiquity of human error on all sides.

***

By comparison, a most notable ally was the devoted Wittgensteinian, Elizabeth Anscombe. Anscombe’s organizational skills marked a turning point for Ludwig. An Oxford don in her own right, Elizabeth translated his German and prepared the typescript for printing. Easier said than done.

The first step meant flipping through his wild jumble of wastepaper fragments from the trenches, then improbably as it sounds, plopping like-with-like into clumps of narrative. Finally, the hard-won collection was tediously pieced together, adding syntax as she went, much as one would do with a monstrous jigsaw-puzzle. Married with children, Elizabeth doted on Wittgenstein as her mentor and confidante, eventually becoming his capable literary executor, remarkable in such a male-dominated profession at that time.

Neither was the attraction one-sided. The professor took more than a scholarly interest in Elizabeth’s several pregnancies, including on at least one occasion, paying for her hospital expenses. Tongues wagged of course, finding innuendo in the close confines of co-editoring ‘Philosophical Investigations’ (1953), his wide-ranging final work — though Elizabeth’s marriage nonetheless remained firmly intact. Defying university rules, she was also a chain-smoker and shameless hussy, she wore trousers to boot.

At the time, this odd couple were busily working out Plato’s ‘Parmenides’ and its implications for modern life. On the face of things, how could their time together be anything other than ‘platonic,’ which soon became a hallowed joke between them. Supposedly a ‘closeted homosexual’, Wittgenstein realized of course, that an openly gay life would not sit well with the Cambridge faculty. With all his eccentric ways, he kept the rumour-mill in overdrive. He was said to have formed several male relationships, whether mere flirtations or otherwise…while at the same time, there is no denying his close attachment to Elizabeth. Whatever his private desires, it may be more equitable to regard them as ‘a plurality of gender attractions’ as one postmodern commentator deftly put it, mercifully bringing a literary closure to the whole tendentious matter.

***

Wittgenstein’s ‘blue book,’ a record of his pithy explanations and observations during his Cambridge tutorials, is widely regarded as the turning point in developing his thoughts on the philosophy of language. It begins with the challenging negation, ‘What is the meaning of a ‘word,’… when taken out of context, without a mutually agreed understanding of the situation in which the word is applied.

Then comes the question of whether that word is encrypted with the same emotional, cognitive, or behavioral implications for the other person, who may be a morally tough Kantian or an empathetic Rogerian. For one listener, the word may be a clarion call to action while another may dismiss the same word with a careless shrug, depending upon the associations made by each listener. Either way makes for a clumsy, dim appropriation of the truth: Wittgenstein angrily called it out as ‘an epistemological mishmash!” Dictionaries on the other hand, foster the promise of exactitude for each word, then seemingly as an afterthought, append long lists of synonyms and antonyms, beggaring an unstated ambiguity.

“The discipline of human language, even the need to be grammatical correct, shapes my thoughts about the world,” Wittgenstein readily admitted, “culling and ordering my ideas. It also blinds me to those matters that by their nature, don’t lend themselves to such an invisible discipline — human emotions, for example — so that they end up hopelessly tangled in metaphysical angst.”

In his formative years, he had followed the logical proposition that most human action should follow a direction, having a defined purpose. At first sight, this seemed obvious. Yet so often such purposeful action was waylaid by the unexpected — as with a fleeting romance and its soulful denouement — heading off into a pleasing detour, or sorrowful cul-de-sac, of what was otherwise planned.

Regardless of outcome, the hapless individual, struggling to keep up appearances, constructs a word-centered narrative in retrospect. Ofttimes, this is a face-saving or wish-fulfillment piece lying somewhere between a half-truth and fantasy. The resulting tale makes sense of events, justifying ourselves to ourselves, in which otherwise awkward experiences are shaped into a pleasing coherence that never existed. Oh well, who can cast the first stone?

With such willful self-deception in mind, Wittgenstein concluded ruefully that most people live in a subjective world of their own construction, wordy explanations of what passes for reality — widening the gap between actual events and wishful thinking. These spoken narratives, convenient and reassuring, are mutually shared and reinforced, repeated over and over, eventually becoming enshrined in memory, finally passed down as rote…not only between individuals but also, more alarmingly, by warring nation-states. Later codified in psychology as ‘cognitive dissonance’ (see Festinger, 1956), Wittgenstein’s original conception emphasized the deceptive role of language as central to the sophistry by which the Self deceives itself using the artifice of words.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy students, glassy-eyed, mouths agape, labored to understand their professor, constructing all manner of complexities around his words and behaviors. Yet his pithy utterances came stripped down to basics, as bare as possible. Sadly, many students missed the point that their florid outpourings created the very problem he was struggling to convey. He wanted them to do the work, to grasp an insight beyond the reach of words.

***

Philosophers of varying stripes, not to mention courtroom lawyers, have been looking to disentangle the inherent problems of language for thousands of years. Otherwise, to use these confusions to their advantage, by which the art of sophistry came into being. The philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.500 BCE), for example, despairing of all the idle meanings given to his works, spoke only in short riddles — an early case of ‘if you can’t win, then join them’? Most notable however, are the writings of St Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, and foremost Scholastic thinker of medieval times.

In his ‘Summa Theologica’ (1265 – 1274 CE), drawn selectively from Aristotle, Aquinas sought to lay down the theological foundations of Christian faith, a massive work that continues to be studied, particularly in seminaries. Following ‘a mystical experience of God’, he finally retreated from his life’s work, not with a denunciation, but rather humbly, that ‘the truth’ he was struggling to expound was fine as far as it went… yet remained inadequate and lay beyond the reach of language (“all that I have written seems as straw to me”).

Wittgenstein found a surprising ally, incredibly, in Aquinas’ Summa. He picked up the same challenge, not with more words but rather with less words, making it a central feature of his work:  is free-thinking truly possible, outside the bounds of human language, which entangles our thinking at ever turn…leading Aquinas to abandon his great work?

Not for nothing does the Bible open with an unforgettable one-liner: ‘In the beginning was the Word…’ (John 1:1). Here is Wittgenstein’s passion, writ large: that right from the start words dupe us into thinking that what can be communicated with human language represents ‘truth’ — the totality of life as we experience it. As if direct experience and abstract language are one and the same. As Wittgenstein tells it, and Aquinas before him, such words separate us from the community of shared humanity, leaving us alienated from the natural world.

Language of course has many practical uses, not the least of which is lifesaving communication in a time of danger, great need, or just plain social conversation. All this is fine as far as it goes, the everyday use of language: pragmatic and functional. It is not however that which Aquinas and Wittgenstein are calling us to recognize. These two thinkers point to the ineffable world of patterns and attributions woven into human language…yet that which the ‘false mastery’ of language purports to grasp — and therein lies the problem!

To describe language as merely symbolic, rails Wittgenstein, grossly understates its central position in the human world. At the same time, he struggled with the philosophical quandary of conveying personal experience in all its nuances when faced with the disparate consciousness of other minds. Then there is the inadequacy of language to convey such innermost experience. Words as they are written and spoken may promise much but come up short, as with Aquinas’ comparison of ‘straw’ when applied to his Summa. “Let me tell you my feelings” will always be less intimate than intended…or else moreso than ever imagined!

No wonder that Wittgenstein developed his methods of sorting out such labyrinthine difficulties: that the same words may not carry the same meaning for each party… as many a fumbling suitor has found to his or her dismay. Casually dismissed as ‘misunderstandings,’ belies a profound truth about everyday language.

***

There can be little doubt that Wittgenstein’s legacy is a hard one to corral. At first glance, traits like ‘charismatic’ and ‘visionary’ spring to mind aplenty, not forgetting ‘mischievous’ — yet still the breadth of Wittgenstein’s character and genius remains elusive. Sometimes we are left to wonder: self-contained one minute, exuberant the next. ‘Enigmatic’ promises much but impenetrably, tells us little of practical use.

Born into great wealth, social historians point to his selfless generosity (he gave it all away) or his wartime courage under fire (wounded in action). Counter to the age in which he lived, materialism held little sway with him. Today, studies of his life and work are rife with interpretations of one sort or another — sometimes contradictory — which is less a criticism of these earnest works than the inscrutable statement it makes about the man himself.

One is left with many different Wittgensteins, for such was his protean temperament, in all manner of shades and guises. An all-rounder, of cleverly constructed personas, while masking an ineffable singularity? By such means, he was able to cope with his haunting war memories by a process of dissociation into multiple selves so that, for the most part, he remained functional in the mainstream world. The struggle to reconcile one with the other, arguably, shaped the journey of his life. Only by secluding himself could he become whole once again — though this meant giving his demons their due. The effect is at once exhilarating and exasperating. Having so many selves available to him made for a wildly adventurous life…if not a deeply conflicted one.

Whether this level of psychodynamic conflict speaks to a schizophreniform component in his personality mix remains open to question. His self-described ‘spiritual epiphanies’, for example, border on florid hallucinations? Such a condition is associated with brief psychotic episodes, interspersed with lengthy appearances of normal functioning. A Bipolar disorder has also been cited as a possible rule-out. At any rate, with so many chaotic vectors — his brothers’ suicides and war traumata — it was characteristic of him that increasingly, he needed time to himself.

Above all, peace and isolation were prerequisites but not, however, to enable creative writing as might be expected with most philosophers. Nor were Wittgenstein’s retreats ‘holiday vacations’ in any typical sense; they were in fact, segues in which he attempted to make peace with the warring parts of his own personality. For all his talents and charm, he was given to terrible rages and even darker thoughts which he largely managed to repress, only to be ventilated in his regular sabbaticals. Notably, the hot-blooded incident with Popper is an illuminating exception in which, pushed to the limits, ‘the center could not hold’. Whatever the nature of his inner struggles, they do not diminish Wittgenstein but rather point to what he achieved in spit of these difficulties.

There were many cathartic retreats over the years, including several to Ireland. Each offered a strange kind of freedom commingled with a scarifying vulnerability. Even more frugal by comparison was the retreat he had built according to his own specifications, deep within Norway’s longest fiord — fittingly, an isolated hut perched precariously on a steep mountainside.

As with all his activities, Wittgenstein knew only one speed so perhaps, on the whole, the most lasting image is a collegial one. The sight of the famous analytic thinker on his ancient bicycle dashing around Cambridge en route to the library, with his colorful gown flowing behind him, ringing his bicycle-bell furiously as he rattled along on the cobblestone paths, made for an unforgettable moment. Startled students jumped as Wittgenstein clattered past, nonplussed, leaving them unsure whether to snicker or applaud.

Ludwig Wittgenstein passed away on April 29,1951, aged sixty-two, after a prolonged struggle with prostate cancer, in the attic bedroom of his treating physician. Elizabeth Anscombe was by his side. She was bequeathed one third of his estate, including copyright and royalties.
Ludwig was forever fascinated by the unknowable miracle of existence, as both a literary figure and a human being…even unto his last breath.
“Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life!” he whispered quite casually and then again slowly in a most tenderly manner… his parting words of gratitude.

In a fitting twist of irony, the residence was known locally as ‘Storey’s End.

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Paul B. Donovan is a freelance humanist writer, forensic psychologist, and the author most recently, of “Epicurus in Love: A Novel of Mythos and Desire in Ancient Greece” (2023, The Euphorion Press). He is a regular contributor to The Montreal Review.              Pamela S. Pease has exhibited her art in Santa Fe and Maine galleries, as well as internationally. Inspired by the shapes of Nature and the geometry of objects, her artistic style has been described as ‘at once both impressionistic and abstract.’ She is also the author and illustrator of several children’s books, lately "El Joffee: Poodle de Santa Fe.”

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