[Wittrs] more re 'Wittgenstein Reads Weininger'

kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx> · Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:46:54 -0800

I've finished a first reading of 'Wittgenstein Reads Weininger',
an anthology.  Alex found it at Powell's (along with some other
pocket guide to Wittgenstein) considered it a good find.

I have to agree.  We discussed it over Ethopian food.  He'd done
some skimming but doesn't have time for much reading these
days.  When he does start a reading program, he envisions
going back to Nietzsche first, so it may be awhile before he
tackles these titles.

In the meantime he told me he's relying on me to be his
eyes and ears in some respects.  I can provide a cogent
synopsis for our Study Circle (we may go back to the
church / coffee shop where we started).

We're both adding to this world class collection of Wittgenstein
books.

My "time capsule" (art deco hemi-cylinder of shelves, currently
serving as a book case) has almost the entire fourth self devoted
to this set.  I've ordered two more recently, based on titles
flying by on this list.  I have a little more discretionary income
thanks to a recent promotion.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/4015630210/
(time capsule in cluttered state, prior to becoming book
shelves)

Joachim Schulte's contribution to this volume puts some
energy into reminding us of the cultural distance between
"ourselves" (early 2000s) and the world in which Weininger
was writing.

Two world wars have happened in between, and vast
extermination campaigns.  It's hard to look back through the
nightmare 1900s and recapture the mindset of those times.

Schulte describes a lost innocence, unrecoverable, and
therefore a cultural rift twixt us and them.  What
"anti-Semitic" means, for example, has its own trajectory
through time, acquires spin, in precession with other
meanings.  There's no going back, no undoing what's
done.  Weininger himself dwells on this point:   the
unidirectionality of time the moral implications that
entails (ideas about freedom versus dodging one's
responsibility as a free agent go here).

I think a lot of us take for granted what generations of
Jungian and Freudian have accomplished since the late
1800s.  We're used to the language of archetypes,
elaborate symbolic vistas unfurled and placed against
a backdrop of a shared / collective psychology.  Thanks
to James Campbell and the miracle of television, treating
sweeping mythologies as maps of the human psyche
is a matter of course among literati today.  We're a more
college educated viewership these days.  BBC and NPR
have informed us all about the findings of depth
psychology.

But in Weininger's time this stuff was still new.  His writing
portended a new kind of inventiveness that would allow
for new forms of self analysis and introspection.  Men
would seek their anima within.  Women would find more
ways to talk openly of what had hitherto been taboo
subjects.

Wittgenstein himself said he appreciated Weininger
for helping make that Freudian stuff come alive -- in
ways Freud himself kept his distanced from, branding
young self-murdering Otto something of a wacko, if
gifted.

The Victorian salon had gone co-ed and the new
intellectuals, impressed by a brave new science,
needed fresh ways to "occupy sex" i.e. talk about
it openly in authorized ways, as moral observers
and healers, as doctors (respected), not as prurient
peeping toms (creeps) or scandal-mongering gossips.

Also, to read Weininger more as people did at the
time, one has to reconnect it to the vast cultural /
neural net from which it fed, plus add a dimension of
self aware irony and self spoof that might be missing
if you come to it cold and pre-disposed to find it nasty.
In today's terms, the guy was a shock jock.  He
would have lit up the boards as a radio call in talk
show host.  He was pioneering new territory, creating
language not just using it.

One gets the impression that Wittgenstein's respect
for Weininger was somewhat of an embarrassment
for the austere logicians and their somewhat easily
offended sensibilities.  By the early 2000s, those
kinds of hang-up have been largely overcome, much
as we now speak of homosexuality without blushing
or stuttering.

I'll close with the remark that Wittgenstein's love of
"low brow" culture, i.e. movies and Weininger type
writing (more like underground comix, like Crumb),
was in no way inconsistent with his appreciation
for "ordinary language" doing its job.

He saw Weininger as "doing work" as in "walking his talk"
more than idling, and so continued to express his
appreciation for his project.  Wittgenstein took
encouragement from Otto's passion for integrity --
even if he went off the rails in ways Wittgenstein
would not.  Ludwig learned from Otto's mistakes.

A philosopher is more a psychoanalyst on the cultural
level than one might at first imagine.

Ethnography on oneself (in one's community) is the
hardest of all.

Wittgenstein knew he was good at it, but as he had
few peers practicing in the same ballpark, it was
really hard to judge his own level.  His originality was
such that comparisons were (and are) somewhat
difficult.

Kirby

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[Wittrs] more re 'Wittgenstein Reads Weininger'

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