[Wittrs] Re: Russell on Wittgenstein, From McGuiness' Young Ludwig
- From: brendan downs <downs_brendan@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:37:49 +1200
Thank you for your email. I will attempt to read all the posts on the site, to
get a clearer understanding of the site and of W and so I can navigate the site
to somewhat of the sites expectations.
Thanks brendan
> Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:09:18 +0000
> From: SWMirsky@xxxxxxx
> To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Wittrs] Re: Russell on Wittgenstein, From McGuiness' Young Ludwig
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
> >
> > [Reposting this so I can place it in a special place on the discussion
> > board. This comes from Stuart Mirsky. --ed]
> >
>
> Thanks for re-posting Sean. I just wished you'd fixed the typos I left in.
> Well I've tried to do some of that below, while also adding a few more
> interesting items from the book in question:
>
> Russell on the occasion of Wittgenstein's first visit to him (p.88)from a
> letter to Lady Ottoline dated October 11, 1911:
>
> . . . this raised a lot of complicated problems, which we were in the middle
> of when an unknown German appeared, speaking very little English but refusing
> to speak German.
>
> (returning the next day their discourse prompted Russell to write)
>
> [he appears] obstinate and perverse, but I think not stupid.
>
>
> (then those excerpts already offered follow):
>
>
> Page 89 (to Lady Ottoline)
>
> My German friend threatens to be an infliction. (19 October)
>
> My German, who seems to be rather good, was very argumentative. (25 October)
>
> My German was very argumentative and tiresome. He wouldn't admit that it was
> certain that there was not a rhinoceros in the room. . . . he came back and
> argued all the time I was dressing. (1 November)
>
> My German engineer, I think, is a fool. He thinks nothing empirical is
> knowable -- I asked him to admit there was not a rhinoceros in the room, but
> he wouldn't. (2 November)
>
>
> Page 92 (to Lady Ottoline, 27 November)
>
> My German is hesitating between philosophy and aviation; he asked me today
> whether I thought he was utterly hopeless at philosophy, I told him I didn't
> know but I thought not. I asked him to bring me something written to help me
> judge. He has money and is quite passionately interested in philosophy, but
> feels he ought not to give his life to it unless he is some good. I feel the
> responsibility, rather, as I really don't know what to think of his ability.*
>
>
> * Russell told this story several times (e.g., Autobiography, vol. 2, p. 99;
> Portraits from Memory, p. 23) usually in a livelier form: 'Will you please
> tell me whether I am a complete idiot or not?' -- 'My deaar fellow, I don't
> know. Why are you asking me?' -- 'Because, if I am a complete idiot, I shall
> become an aeronaut; but, if not, I shall become a philosopher.' The written
> work was to be done (and indeed was done) in the vacation.
>
>
> David Pinsent on the relationship between Russell and Wittgenstein
> (reflecting events from June 1912) p. 93:
>
> . . . He had been brought up to engineering, for which he had neither taste
> nor talent. And only recently he had tried philosophy and come up here to
> study under Russell. Which had proved his salvation: for Russell had given
> him encouragement.
>
>
> Page 98 (Russell to Lady Ottoline againMarch 2, 1912)
>
> While I was preparing my speech Wittgenstein appeared in a great state of
> mind of mind because Johnson* (with whom I advised him to coach) wrote and
> said he wouldn't take him any more, practically saying he argued too much
> instead of learning his lesson like a good boy. He came to me to know what
> truth there was in Johnson's feeling. Now he is terribly persistent, hardly
> lets one get a word
> in, and is generally considered a bore. As I really like him very much, I was
> able to hint these things to him without offending him . . . Wittgenstein
> says Johnson's own ideas seem to him muddled, but his comments on W's ideas
> seemed excellent; evidently however, J. resented W. not taking his word as
> law . . . It was a delicate matter talking to Wittgenstein.
>
> * W. E. Johnson, philosophical logician then teaching the subject at
> Cambridge.
>
> Wittgenstein much later, through Keynes, sought to visit Johnson and the
> Cambridge logician replied in a note dated August 24, 1925: "Tell
> Wittgenstein that I shall be very pleased to see him once more; but I must
> bargain that we don't talk on the foundations of Logic, as I am no longer
> equal to having my roots dug up." (p. 99)
>
>
> Also on page 99 (from an anecdotal account by Russell published in Mind in
> 1951)
>
> Getting to know Wittgenstein was one of the most exciting intellectual
> adventures of my life. In later years there was a lack of intellectual
> sympathy between us, but in early years I was as willing to learn from him as
> he from me.
>
> Page 100 (from Russell's Autobiography)
>
> He was perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as
> traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating. He
> had a kind of purity which I have never known equalled except by G. E. Moore.
>
> Page 100 (to Lady Ottoline circa 1912)
>
> I like Wittgenstein more and more. He has the theoretical passion very
> strongly -- it is a rare passion and one is glad to find it. He doesn't want
> to prove this or that, but to find out how things really are.
>
> W. is very excitable: he has more passion about philosophy than I have; his
> avalanches make mine seem mere snowballs. He has the pure intellectual
> passion in the highest degree; it makes me love him. His disposition is that
> of an artist, intuitive and moody. He says every morning he begins his work
> with hope, and every evening he ends in despair -- he has just the sort of
> rage when he can't understand things as I have.
>
> He even has the same similes as I have -- a wall parting him from the truth,
> which he must pull down somehow. After our last discussion, he said, 'Well,
> there's a bit of wall pulled down'.
>
> Page 102 (to Lady Ottoline)
>
> In argument he forgets about manners and simply says what he thinks. . . . In
> spite of it all there is something about him that
> makes him a bore. In his flat moments, he still talks, slowly, stammering,
> and saying dull things. But at his best he is splendid. (March 8, 1912)
>
> No one could be more sincere than Wittgenstein or more destitute of the false
> politeness that interferes with the truth; but he lets his feelings and
> affections appear and it warms one's heart. (March 10, 1912)
>
> I think he is passionately devoted to me. Any difference of feeling causes
> him great pain. My feeling towards him is passionate, but of course my
> absorption in you makes it less important to me than his feeling is to him.
> (June 1, 1912)
>
> Page 103
>
> Oddly enough, he makes me less anxious to live, because I feel he will do the
> work I should do, and do it better. He starts fresh at a point which I only
> reached when my intellectual spring was nearly exhausted. (June 1, 1912)
>
> I had a letter from Wittgenstein, a dear letter which I will show you. I love
> him as if he were my son. (August 22, 1912)
>
> Page 104
>
> I told him he ought not simply to state what he thinks is true, but to give
> arguments for it, but he said arguments spoil its beauty, and that he would
> feel as if he were dirtying a flower with muddy hands. He does appeal to me
> -- the artist in intellect is so very rare. I told him I hadn't the heart to
> say anything against that . . . I am seriously afraid that no one will see
> the point of anything he writes, because he won't recommend it by arguments
> addressed to a
> different point of view. (May 28, 1912)
>
> He gives me such a delightful lazy feeling that I can leave a whole
> department of difficult thought to him, which used to depend on me alone. It
> makes it much easier for me to give up technical work. (September 4, 1912)
>
> Page 106
>
> I argued about Matter with him. He thinks it is a trivial problem. He admits
> that if there is no Matter then no one exists but himself, but he says that
> doesn't hurt, since physics and astronomy and all the other sciences could
> still be interpreted so as to be true. (April 23, 1912)
>
>
> David Pinsent in his diary dated May 1912:
>
> Wittgenstein has only just started systematic reading [in philosophy] and he
> expresses the most naive surprise that all the philosophers he once
> worshipped in ignorance are all stupid and dishonest and make disgusting
> mistakes.
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline (p. 106) May 2, 1912:
>
> He (Wittgenstein) is the only man I have ever met with a real bias for
> philosophical scepticism; he is glad when it is proved that something can't
> be known.
>
> Wittgenstein to Russell re: Moore's then magnum opus (p. 109) June 1912:
>
> I have just been reading a part of Moore's Principia Ethica (now please don't
> be shocked) I do not like it at all. (Mind you quite apart from disagreeing
> with most of it.) I don't believe -- or rather I am sure -- that it cannot
> dream of comaring with Frege's or your own works (except perhaps some of the
> Philosophical Essays) . . . Unclear statements don't get a bit clearer by
> being repeated!!
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline (p. 111) March 17, 1912:
>
> He (Wittgenstein) is far more terrible with Xtians (Christians) than I am. He
> liked F., the undergraduate monk, and was horrified to learn that he is a
> monk. F. came to tea with him and W. at once attacked him -- as I imagine,
> with absolute fury. Yesterday he returned to the charge, not arguing but only
> preaching honesty. I wonder what will have come of it. He abominates ethics
> and morals generally; he is deliberately a creature of impulse, and thinks
> one should be.
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline on April 23, 1912 (p. 112):
>
> He lives in the same kind of tense excitement I do, hardly able to sit or
> read a book. He was talking about Beethoven -- how a friend described going
> to Beethoven's door and hearing him 'cursing and howling and singing' over
> his new fugue; after a whole hour Beethoven at last came to the door, looking
> as if he had been fighting the devil, and had eaten nothing for 36 hours
> because his cook and parlour-maid had been away from his rage. That's the
> sort of man to be.
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline on November 9, 1912 (p. 112):
>
> I had a passionate afternoon, provided by North and Wittgenstein. I had
> arranged to talk with Wittgenstein, and felt bound to see North's race, so I
> took Wittgenstein to the river. North was beaten, not by much; he was rather
> done afterwards. The excitement and conventional importance of it was
> painful. North minded being beaten horribly, though he didn't show much.
> Wittgenstein was disgusted -- and said we might as well have looked on at a
> bull fight (I had that feeling myself), that all was of the devil, and so on.
> I was cross North had been beaten, so I explained the necessity of
> competition with painful lucidity. At last we got on to other topics, and I
> thought it was all right, but he suddenly stood still and explained that the
> way we had spent the afternoon was so vile that we ought not to live, or at
> least he ought not, that nothing is tolerable except producing great works or
> enjoying those of others, that he has accomplished nothing and never will,
> etc. -- all this with a force that nearly knocks one down.
>
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline on May 30, 1912 (p. 113):
>
> Wittgenstein surprised me the other day; he suddenly said how he admired the
> text 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own
> soul' and then went on to say how few there are who don't lose their soul. I
> said it depended on having a larger purpose that one is true to. He said he
> thought it dependend more on suffering and the power to endure it. I was
> surprised -- I hadn't expected that kind of thing from him.
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline on June 1, 1912 (p. 113):
>
> Wittgenstein began on Dickens, saying David Copperfield ought not to have
> quarrelled with Steerforth for running away with Little Emily. I said I
> should have done so; he was much pained, and refused to believe it; thought
> one could and should always be loyal to friends and go on loving them. We got
> on to Julie Lespinasse, and I asked him how he would feel if he were married
> to a woman and she ran away with another man. He said (and I believe him)
> that he would feel no rage or hate, only utter misery. His nature is good
> through and through; that is why he doesn't see the need of morals. I was
> utterly wrong at first; he might do all kinds of things in passion, but he
> would not practise any cold-blooded immorality. His outlook is very free;
> principles and such seem to him nonsense, because his impulses are strong and
> never shameful . . .
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline on March 6, 1913 (p. 115):
>
> [music] is too apart, too passionate, and too remote from words.
> [Wittgenstein] has not a sufficiently wide curiosity or a sufficient wish for
> a broad survey of the world. It won't spoil his work on logic, but it will
> make him always a very narrow specialist, and rather too much the champion of
> a party -- that is when judged by the highest standards.
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline on March 5, 1912 (p. 117):
>
> [G. E. Moore thought] enormously highly of Wittgenstei's brain . . . -- says
> he always feels W. must be right when they disagree. He says during his
> lectures W. always looks frightfully puzzled, but nobody else does.
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline on March 16, 1912 (p. 117):
>
> Wittgenstein . . . said how much he loves Moore, how he likes and dislikes
> people for the way they think -- Moore has one of the most beautiful smiles I
> know, and it had struck him.
>
>
> Russell in his Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 64 (p. 118):
>
> [Wittgenstein] was in those days beautiful and slim, with a look almost of
> inspiration, and with an intellect as deeply passionate as Spinoza's. He had
> a kind of exquisite purity.
>
> Russell to Lady Ottoline May 2, 1912 (p. 118):
>
> Then Lytton came to tea to meet Wittgenstein, which he wished to do.
> Everybody has just begun to discover Wittgenstein; they all now realize he
> has genius. He was very good at tea.
>
> . . . They were thinking of electing him to the Society. I told them I didn't
> think he would like the Society. I am quite sure he wouldn't really. It would
> seem to him stuffy, as indeed, it has become, owing to their practice of
> being in love with each other, which didn't exist in my day -- I think it is
> mainly due to Lytton.
>
> Lytton Strachey to John Maynard Keynes on May 17, 1912 concerning a later
> meeting in the rooms of Lytton Strachey's brother, Oliver Strachey:
>
> Oliver and Herr Sinckel-Winckel [Wittgenstein] hard at it on universals and
> particulars. The latter oh! so bright -- but quelle souffrance! Oh God! Oh
> God! 'If A loves B' -- 'There must be a common quality' -- 'Not analysable in
> that way at all, but the complexes have certain qualties.' How shall I manage
> to slink off to bed?
>
>
>
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