Ludwig Wittgenstein: Professor of Philosophy
Background • The Early Years • Cambridge • Norway • First World War • Tractatus and Teaching • Architect • Return to Cambridge • In Russia and Norway etc. • Professor of Philosophy • Final Years
1938
In the first weeks of January Wittgenstein was still in Vienna. At the start of the Lent term he was only briefly in Cambridge; he did not begin the series of seminars which had been announced on Philosophy and Philosophical Foundations of Mathematics until the Easter term. On 8 February he travelled to Dublin for a lengthy stay. There, on 12 March, he heard from Drury about the Anschluss, which he could hardly have believed possible. He returned immediately to Cambridge, where he met Piero Sraffa to have his views on the new state of affairs. Sraffa wrote to him on 14 March, Before trying to discuss [the matter], probably in a confused way, I want to give a clear answer to your question. If you say it is of ‘vital’ importance’ for you to be able to leave Austria and return to England, there is no doubt - ‘you must not go to Vienna’.
Piero Sraffa in Cambridge. Taken by a street photographer
The situation in central Europe became ever more threatening, the enforced convergence of Austria with Nazi-Germany ever more apparent. Wittgenstein decided to change his nationality, and turned to his friends Sraffa and Keynes for advice. At first he was unsure whether to apply for British or Irish citizenship, but decided on practical considerations for the British. In the same connection, he also applied for a position in the University of Cambridge. Until his Fellowship at Trinity College expired, he had previously taught in the University of Cambridge as a fellow of the college.
Following the German invasion of Austria, Wittgenstein’s sisters and other members of the family living there found themselves in great danger because of their Jewish descent.
In April Wittgenstein started on the seventeenth volume: MS 121 Philosophische Bemerkungen XVII. At the same time he continued writing on Volume XIII and notebooks MSS 158 and 159. He revised the manuscript volumes XIII to XVI, the second half of the Philosophische Untersuchungen and the notebook 162a in the typescript 221, which he then revised again in typescripts TSS 222, 223 and 224, since published almost complete as part I of the Remarks on the foundations of Mathematics, Oxford 1956. In August he wrote the preface (TS 225) to an earlier version of the Philosophische Untersuchungen, known as the Pre-war version (TS 220).
With the help of his friends Rush Rhees and Yorick Smythies, Wittgenstein began an English translation of the manuscript of the Untersuchungen and made some initial attempts to arrange publication. According to an entry in its records on 30 September, Cambridge University Press was at first willing to publish the book under the title Philosophical Remarks. Difficulties with translating the manuscript eventually led Wittgenstein to abandon thoughts of publication.
In October the Faculty of Moral Science of the University of Cambridge made Wittgenstein a full member. With Moore about to become an emeritus professor, Wittgenstein applied for the chair which would be becoming vacant.
Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Fellows’ Garden, Trinity College. Photo by Norman Malcom
1939
On 6 January he began notebook 162a. On 11 February the University of Cambridge elected Wittgenstein as Moore’s successor as Professor of Philosophy. Wittgenstein, unsure that he would be appointed, is amazed, especially at the reason given by Professor Broad, a fellow of Trinity College, who had something of a personal antipathy towards him: To refuse the chair to Wittgenstein would be like refusing Einstein a chair of Physics. (Drury, in: Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford 1981)
On 14 April Wittgenstein got his British citizenship, and on 2 June his new passport. On 22 June he travelled to Vienna, from there to Berlin on 5 July, and on 12 July via England to New York, where he conducted various negotiations with the relevant authorities and with the directors of the family’s holdings about the Wittgenstein family assets. A considerable part of the enormous currency assets was converted to Reichsmarks, following which the “Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung” (Reich Office for Research into Ancestry), ... in accordance with the directive of the Minister of the Interior for the Reich dated 29.8.1939 ...., based on an order of the Führer and Reichs Chancellor” has new documents of ancestry made out, in which the common grandfather, Hermann Christian Wittgenstein, is eventually declared to be an ancestor of German blood.
In mid-August Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge. On his being made professor, his fellowship at Trinity was renewed. He moved once more into his old rooms in Whewells Court, which he had had to give up on expiry of his research fellowship. After his fellowship ran out in 1936 and his return from Norway at the end of 1937, he had shared with Francis Skinner a small flat above a greengrocer’s shop in East Road in Cambridge.
View from Wittgenstein’s Study of Whewells Court, Trinity College
On 16 October Wittgenstein began the 18th volume, MS 122, Philosophische Bemerkungen XVIII, which he continues in volume XIII on 3 February 1940. Volume XVIII is published in part, interspersed with comments from manuscript volume XIII, as part 3 of the Remarks on the foundations of Mathematics, Oxford 1956.
At the start of the academic year 1939/40, on 1 October, Wittgenstein took over the chair with a series of seminars on the Philosophische Untersuchungen.
1940
Since becoming professor, Wittgenstein had been active once more in the sessions of the Moral Science Club, whose chairmanship continued to be held by Moore until 1944. He gives a seminar paper there on 2 February, and on 19 February a lecture to the Mathematical Society.
From 10 April to 21 August Wittgenstein was writing in the notebook MS 162b and from 25 September to 23 November in the volume Philosophische Bemerkungen, MS 123.
In 1940/41 Wittgenstein held seminars on Philosophy and on problems connected with the Philosophische Untersuchungen, as well as private discussions on aesthetics: Prof. Wittgenstein will be at home to his students on Sundays at 5 p.m. in his room in Trinity College. (from the teaching calendar, Cambridge University Reporter)
1941
Wittgenstein began the notebooks MSS 164 and 165, which he used until about 1944.
He finished the manuscript volume MS 123 on 6 June, and then wrote in volume 124 until 4 July, and later in notebook 163.
On 11 October his friend Francis Skinner died of poliomyelitis.
Wittgenstein’s Pocket Diary
Page from Wittgenstein’s Photoalbum, Francis Skinner, Family at Christmas Dinner in Alleegasse
In the early years of the war, Wittgenstein was often unhappy at not being able to find any work besides his academic activity and at being obliged to be a non-participant observer of the war. At the invitation of John Ryle, the brother of Gilbert Ryle, who had previously been Regius Professor of Physics at Cambridge, Wittgenstein did voluntary work from November at Guy’s Hospital in London, working first as an orderly with responsibility for taking drugs to the wards (where, however, as John Ryle’s wife related, he advised the patients not to take them). Later on he worked as a laboratory assistant, mixing ointments for dermatology. Whilst working in the hospital he became friendly with Roy Fouracre, a simple man of very humble origins, who arrived as a soldier from the Far East. Wittgenstein remained closely bound to him in friendship to the end of his life.
Although listed in the lecture calendar, from now on he took only private courses, on Saturday afternoons and often on Sunday mornings as well, mostly on the Foundations of Mathematics.
The first entry in pocket notebook MS 125 was from 28 December. This manuscript, interspersed with comments from MSS 126 and 127, was published in part as part IV of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Oxford 1956.
1942
His usual holidays in Austria were no longer possible, so he visited his friend Rush Rhees in Swansea, where he could concentrate on his work and at the same time recover from a gall-stone operation at Guy’s Hospital.
On 7 July he returned to his work at Guy’s Hospital in London. In October he completed MS 125 and starts on a new manuscript on Mathematics and Logic, MS 126
Among his students was the mathematician Georg Kreisel, whom Wittgenstein regarded as competent to continue his work on the Foundations of Mathematics. Wittgenstein had a series of conversations with Kreisel at the time on Hardy’s Course of Pure Mathematics, a classic introduction to differential and integral calculus then widely disseminated in British universities. MSS 126 and 127 were based on Wittgenstein’s marginal comments in Hardy’s book which date from that time.
1943
On 6 January Wittgenstein continued his work in MS 126 in volume MS 127 F. Mathematik und Logik. The “F” refers to the alphabetic indexing of a series of manuscripts which, at least in terms of integrity of indexing, was incomplete. Both manuscripts, MSS 126 and 127, were published in part as part V of the Remarks on the foundations of Mathematics, Oxford 1956.
At Guy’s Hospital Wittgenstein got to know the doctor R. T. Grant through his colleague Basil Reeve and became very involved in his work on wound shock therapy. The introduction to the final report of the research published by Reeve and Grant on wound shock therapy (Observations on the General Effects of Injury in Man) was critical of the use of the concept of “wound shock” in a way strongly reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s later philosophical work: Psychological words are similar to those which pass over from everyday language into medical language. (’Shock’), Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Oxford 1980. The way of thinking which underlies the report was, as Reeve and Grant themselves remark, influenced by Wittgenstein. Reeve recalled that while the research report was being drafted, Wittgenstein proposed that the word shock should be printed upside down so as to indicate its unsuitability for the diagnosis of the sequelae of injury.
When Grant’s research group was transferred to Newcastle in April, Wittgenstein decided to join them as a laboratory assistant. In a reference, Grant wrote of Wittgenstein’s contribution to their work, .... he has a keenly critical mind and in discussions of medical and physiological problems has proved a most helpful and stimulating colleague. He has undertaken observations on respiratory variations of blood pressure in man, devising his own experiments and apparatus. The results of his work so far are at variance with commonly accepted views and of considerable interest.
(Nicolas Badusen, Lectures and Essays, 1963).
Wittgenstein now travelled only rarely to Cambridge from Newcastle. He undertook no more formal teaching, and gave up his rooms in Trinity College. In Newcastle he wrote the exercise books MSS 179, 180a and 180b. He spent the holidays again with Rush Rhees in Swansea, where he revised the Philosophische Untersuchungen again, TS 239.
A year previously, with a friend, the Russian philologist Nicholas Bachtin, Wittgenstein had again read the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. At that time he had decided to publish the Philosophical Investigations together with the Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung It occurred to me suddenly that I should publish those old ideas along with the new ones, that the latter could only be properly illuminated by being set in opposition to and against the background of my former way of thinking.
Wittgenstein chose a new title for the planned book: Philosophische Untersuchungen der Logisch-Philosophishen Abhandlung entgegengestellt (Philosophical Investigations counterpoised with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), and replaced the motto from Hertz’s Principles of Mechanics with a new one taken from Johann Nestroy which binds the two works together: It is in the nature of all progress that it looks much greater than it really is.
In September he tried for a second time to get the Cambridge University Press to publish the work. The publishers agreed to Wittgenstein’s wish to publish the Investigations together with the Tractatus, and try to arrange for a publication under licence by the publishers of the Tractatus, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Permission was first granted, but is later revoked.
1944
The research team of Grant and Reeve left Newcastle in February 1944 to continue their studies in Italy on war-wounded in the wake of the breakthrough of the Allied forces. Wittgenstein stayed on several weeks in Newcastle under Grant’s successor, Dr. Bywaters, but was then ordered to return to Cambridge. As Bywaters wrote to his superiors: he has been called back to his Cambridge Chair to write a treatise on Philosophy, which has been in the air for the last year or so, but they now want on paper. On 27 February he is in Cambridge once more, where he finished work on manuscript 127 by 4 March. He then went to Swansea to carry on working on his book.
He stayed from March until September with Rush Rhees in Swansea, and there completed work on manuscript 124. He wrote the manuscript volumes MS 128 - with the title for his new book on the last page: Philos. Untersuchungen der Log. Phil. Abh. entgegengestellt. - and MS 129. While still in Swansea he began the typescript 227 of the Philosophische Untersuchungen, which, together with the additions and alterations that Wittgenstein continued to work on until 1949/50, was published as Philosophical Investigations, Oxford 1953. The original typescript of the final version of Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen can in the meantime no longer be found.
Manuscript Volume MS 128
In connection with typescript 227, on a visit to Cambridge he dictated typescript 242, an intermediate version of the Philosophische Untersuchungen, and also typescript 241, based on the manuscript volume MS 129, which contains three variants of the preface to the Philosophische Untersuchungen.
In October, at the start of the academic year 1944/45, Wittgenstein was again in Cambridge, in his old rooms in Whewells Court. He resumed teaching, with four hours of seminars, two sessions per week, each of two hours, on problems connected with the Philosophische Untersuchungen, writing in MS 129: What I am trying to teach today is the transition from what is not obviously nonsense to what obviously is.
In November, Moore gave up the chair of the Moral Science Club which he had occupied since 1912, Wittgenstein becoming his successor.
Among Wittgenstein’s new students are G. E. M. Anscombe, Timothy Moore (G. E. Moore’s son), Iris Murdoch, Stephan Toulmin, Peter Geach, W. Hijab, C. Jackson, C. A. Mace, J. N. Findlay, K. Madison, W. Mays, P. Munz, E. O’Doherty, S. Plaister, Rose Rand, K. Shah, R. Thouless and J. P. Stern.
1945
Wittgenstein continued working on the Philosophische Untersuchungen, on manuscript 182, which contained comments supplementing the typescript of the Philosophische Untersuchungen of 1944/45 of the version then published. He wrote a new preface to the Untersuchungen (TS 243 and the typescript 228, Bemerkungen I) and began typescript 229, published as Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Oxford 1980, as well as typescript 230 (Bemerkungen II), on which he worked until 1947.
Wittgenstein spent his holidays in Swansea again, where he continued working on manuscript volume XII. In the academic year 1945/46 he held 2-hour seminars twice weekly on the Philosophy of Psychology.
1946
Wittgenstein wrote the manuscript volumes MSS 130, 131 and 132, and started the volume MS 133.
He continued working on typescript 229 and spent most of his holidays in Swansea as before.
In the following academic year he gave two series of seminars, one on the Foundations of Mathematics and one on the Philosophy of Psychology. In mid-November he lectured to the Moral Science Club, as he wrote to Moore on 14 November, .... roughly, on what I believe philosophy is, or what the method of philosophy is ...
(Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore)
1947
On 28 February Wittgenstein completed the manuscript volume MS 133. There follow volumes MSS 134 and 135.
Based on volumes MSS 135, 136 and 137, Wittgenstein started to dictate in Cambridge to the young Austrian emigrant Gitta Deutsch the typescript 232, published in the second volume of the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Oxford 1980 and presumably also began at this time the notebooks MSS 167 and 168.
Wittgenstein spent the summer in Swansea, where he visited his friend Ben Richards. He took sabbatical leave the following academic year in order to be able to concentrate totally on his work. In October Wittgenstein decided to give up the professorship, and on 31 December officially lay down his office.
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Ludwig Wittgenstein. Photographed by Ben Richards in Swansea |
Ben Richards. Photographed by Ludwig Wittgenstein |
In the winter Wittgenstein travelled to Dublin, where his friend Drury had arranged for him to stay at Ross’s Hotel. There he made his first entries in Band Q, MS 136.
Wittgenstein did not number the sixteen manuscript volumes from the period 1940 to 1949, as he had with the previous volumes I to XVIII. The surviving volume designations Q, R, and S and the designation F in MS 127 from the year 1943 point, however, to a similar structure, which it has not yet been possible to reconstruct.
Wittgenstein’s Recipe Book for the Preparation of Medicines and Salves
Nicholas Bachtin
Rush Rhees