Wittgenstein Page #5

Do you understand what I'm saying?

(Like a toff) Yes.

Yes, I'd like that very much. Yes, Wednesday.

Oh, does that suit you?

It suits me fine, yes.

Yes. I thought so, yes.

Yes, he was. Really?

Oh, Bertie? Yes, I know, yes, yes.

For many years, yes.

(Normal voice) Christ!

Professor, you once said the Tractatus

had solved all the problems of philosophy.

Yes.

So I thought at the time.

What I meant was that I tried to show

the sort of things that philosophy could say,

and these aren't really important.

What's much more important

is all the things it can't articulate.

Doesn't cut the mustard, philosophy?

- You think.

- That's right.

So I thought at the time.

In fact, I still think so, but for different reasons.

Now, talking about your more recent work,

the Philosophical Investigations and so on.

That's right. In this later work I abandoned

the idea that language is a sort of picture.

That's just a misleading metaphor.

I mean, you might say that the word "handbag"

is a picture of a handbag.

But what about words like "hello",

"perhaps", "oh, hell",

what do they give us a picture of?

So how would you now define the relationship

between language and the world?

Oh, in lots of different ways.

My mistake had been to think that

there was only one way of talking at stake here.

I came to see that there are

lots of different things we do with language.

Different language games, as I call them.

And the meaning of the word is just the way

it's used in a particular language game.

And what do you now believe

the task of philosophy to be?

Philosophical puzzles arise because we tend

to mix up one language game with another.

For example, people puzzle over

the nature of something they call the "soul".

But this may just be because they're thinking

of the soul along the lines of a physical object.

They're confusing

one way of talking with another.

The job of philosophy

is to sort out these language games?

Exactly.

They're all perfectly in order as they are.

Philosophy in no sense can question them.

Philosophy leaves everything exactly as it is.

Professor Wittgenstein,

you've been associated with the argument

that there can't be a private language.

Could you explain this a little?

What I mean is this,

we learn to use words,

because we belong to a culture.

A form of life.

A practical way of doing things.

In the end, we speak as we do,

because of what we do.

And all this is a properly public affair.

Philosophers in the tradition of Descartes

start from the lonely self,

brooding over its private sensations.

I want to overturn this centuries-old model.

I want to start from our culture,

our shared practical life together,

and look at what we think and feel,

and say it in these public terms.

Professor, thank you very much.

I'm thinking of going away.

Not again, Ludwig.

You've spent your entire life running away.

I'm serious, Maynard.

Where to this time?

Norway? Vienna?

Swansea?

Not the Soviet Union again?

What's wrong with the Soviet Union?

The place is one enormous labour camp.

There's nothing wrong with labour.

There is if they shoot you for not doing it.

I want to give up teaching philosophy

and concentrate on my book.

Why not do it in Cambridge, and be paid?

I'm going to Ireland to live by the sea.

In Ireland they shoot you if you work.

Oh, Ludwig.

I know,

I'm a complete bloody disaster.

We love you.

(Waves lap gently)

Dr Wittgenstein.

Oh, you're here. Good.

At last.

You couldn't have chosen a more remote place.

Well, how's the work on your book?

Creeping along.

That means you've penned a masterpiece.

What's the news from the doctor?

- It's not good, I'm afraid.

- I hope it's not anything serious.

Last week I saw a specialist in Dublin.

I have cancer of the prostate.

Oh, I'm sorry.

It responds well to hormone treatment

at early stages.

Is there anything I can do?

Don't think I'm afraid of dying.

It's death that gives life its meaning and shape.

You can take me back to Cambridge.

I don't want to die here.

Any time you like.

You know,

I'd quite like to have composed a philosophical

work which consisted entirely of jokes.

Why didn't you?

Sadly, I didn't have a sense of humour.

Let me tell you a little story.

There was once a young man who dreamed

of reducing the world to pure logic.

Because he was a very clever young man,

he actually managed to do it.

When he'd finished his work,

he stood back and admired it.

It was beautiful.

A world purged

of imperfection and indeterminacy.

Countless acres of gleaming ice

stretching to the horizon.

So the clever young man looked around the

world he'd created and decided to explore it.

He took one step forward

and fell flat on his back.

You see, he'd forgotten about friction.

The ice was smooth and level and stainless.

But you couldn't walk there.

So the clever young man sat down

and wept bitter tears.

But as he grew into a wise old man,

he came to understand that

roughness and ambiguity aren't imperfections,

they're what make the world turn.

He wanted to run and dance.

And the words

and things scattered upon the ground

were all battered

and tarnished and ambiguous.

The wise old man

saw that that was the way things were.

But something in him

was still homesick for the ice,

where everything was radiant and absolute

and relentless.

Though he had come to like

the idea of the rough ground,

he couldn't bring himself to live there.

So now he was marooned

between earth and ice, at home in neither.

And this was the cause of all his grief.

MOZART:
Rondo in A Minor, K511

Hail Chromodynamics, Lord of Quantum.

This is Quark, Charm and Strangeness

reporting.

Concerning the philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein deceased.

The solution to the riddle of life

in space and time

lies outside space and time.

But as you know and I know,

there are no riddles.

If a question can be put at all,

it can also be answered.

CSAR FRANCK:

Sonata for violin and piano in A Major

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