Bruce Charlton's Notions

I have been reading Ray Monk's biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein - and found the first part very useful and helpful; but had to stop reading soon after Wittgenstein's return to Cambridge in 1929 with his commencement on revising his earlier views expressed in the Tractatus Logico -hilosophicus (published in 1921)...

I had to stop reading because the corruption of Wittgenstein, and his malign effect on so many other people, became too painful to continue.

My understanding is that Wittgenstein was - until shortly after the 1914-18 world war - a deeply religious man who was on the verge of being fully Christian but never crossed that line; after this time his work was a massive, nihilistic rationalisation of his rejection of Christianity.

Metaphysics was at the root. In Tractatus, Wittgenstein wrote a primarily metaphysical book but made the error of assuming that logic was the basis of all philosophy; this he excluded metaphysics from philosophical communications (he continued, avidly, to speak about metaphysics outwith his philosophical work); not because it was unimportant - quite the contrary, but because it was not part of logic.

In Tractatus Wittgenstein made an arbitrary but unjustifiable decision to assert that on the one hand logic could be apprehended by direct knowing ('seeing') but that metaphysics could not ('saying'); therefore he asserted that logic was communicable but not metaphysics.

But there is no reason why metaphysics could not be directly apprehended in exactly the same way that the basic, atomic propositions of logic can be apprehended; therefore there was no reason to exclude metaphysics. However, this was one point on which Wittgenstein became inflexible - he revised almost everything in his philosophical 'system' but not the exclusion of metaphysics.

For Wittgenstein - nothing knowable was really-real.

Thus Wittgenstein's proto-Christian religion was subverted; because Christianity became merely a psychological state. For example, he repeatedly said to many people that while he respected the Roman Catholic Church (in which he had been brought-up) he 'could not' believe all the necessary parts of doctrine.

Wittgenstein seems on the one had (by his repetition of it) to suppose he has said something profound here; yet also seems to be unaware that his personal inability (on a particular day) to believe in something is what is truly subjective; and that the proper question was whether or not that 'something' is true, is really-real!

(Who cares what Wittgenstein happens to think today about Transubstantiation? He often changes his mind! - The proper (metaphysical) question is whether Transubstantiation is a reality, or not? The exact answer 'yes' or 'no' is not (in my opinion) essential to being a Christian; but any Christian must regard this question as a matter of being about-reality, not of being about-individual-human-psychology.)

As a further, and deeper, example: Wittgenstein in his early life correctly recognised that true Christian loving-faith 'casteth out fear'. He was deeply fascinated by accounts which showed that deeply faithful Christians were not worried about the future, about what 'might happen'...

He saw that fear is, in a deep sense, the opposite of love: if we truly believe in the Christian God (creator, god of love, personally concerned by us his children) then there is no ultimate reason to fear anything.

But, Wittgenstein came to regard this 'fear' as a psychological state purely! When the proper understanding of evil-fear is a kind of existential angst; the fear that is cast-out by faith is not merely a human emotion (which in this mixed world is unlikely to conform to any ideal) but the ultimate assumptions concerning the nature of the world.

It is, most exactly, metaphysical fear which is cast out - it is the assumption that fear has a necessary place in our lives that is cast-out by Christian love, by faith in the loving-nature of a creator god.

Wittgenstein went from rejecting speaking about metaphysics in his early work (Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." were the final words. The error is in the word must.); to rejecting all possibility of metaphysics in his later work - in which everything reduces to (current, evanescent) psychology, to therapy, to 'usefulness', to 'life' (to 'language games').

Wittgenstein made it impossible for himself to become a Christian; and thereby damned himself and everybody else who took him seriously and deeply. He also made many people (especially those closest to him) very miserable in this mortal life (and did not seem to apologise, repent, or even notice the fact - unlike in his early life) - consistent with demonstrating that the exclusion of metaphysics does have distal consequences (see blog post below).

And that is why the second half of Wittgenstein's biography is too painful for me to read...

I came across a recent book - Ludwig Wittgenstein, by Miles Hollingworth Oxford University Press, 2018), via a podcast interview entitled "Wittgenstein as mystic" - which I found intriguing in several ways; including the Holligworth seemed rather more interesting and personally committed than the usual run of academic philosophers. 

Consequently, I got hold of and read the book with pretty intense concentration; and, at first, was stimulated and excited by the sense of some Big Thing emerging throughout. 

But, in the end, I felt very let-down. The book seemed to promise much, some kind of break-out into something free and creative and beyond the constraints of the usual... But it delivered me back to the same-old/ same-old world of mainstream academia and its solid linkage to The System - as evidenced by the insidious and soul-sapping inversional values that underlie this book, and lurk behind everything mainstream. 

It set me to reflecting, yet again, about that unusual quality in Wittgenstein; the way that he seems to hold-out the possibility of a genuinely alternative answer and 'escape' - and yet does not. And to wondering why this is.

My conclusion is that - for all his rigorous skepticism about The System (about the dominant and superficially-compelling discourse of logic, mathematics, science etc.), and for all the mysticism of that world of the unspeakable, the religiousness of that which lies beyond or behind what can be said (etc) - the whole of Wittgenstein takes-place within the core assumptions of "Western Philosophy", and so of course it cannot escape the implications of Western Philosophy. 

One needs to go deeper than W. went in order to see where we are, and thereby become inwardly free from it. 

In other words, we need to go as deep as our primary assumptions concerning the nature of reality - that is, metaphysics; and Wittgenstein shared the deep aversion to doing this which characterized his era - indeed the refusal to do this. Something which has, to very varying degrees and in different domains, characterized Western philosophy since at least Ancient Greek times when several core assumptions became habitual.  

And Hollingworth needs to go deeper than he does. He mistakes a degree of detachment from the career structures of academia for intellectual and spiritual independence. Yet it is again and again clear that he is himself a (partly explicit, more fully implicit) supporter and sustainer of several aspects of the core and mainstream 'liberalizing' agenda of the globalist-leftist-materialist System.

The explanatory 'climax' of the book purports to be a distinction between physical and mental philosophy, thinking and doing (which is itself a vast metaphysical assumptions!) and a series of reflections of sex/sexuality in relation to Wittgenstein. 

This whole section rings false, is full of strong but wrong assertions, inconsistencies, and - this is the problem - it is bounded by the very recent and local sex-conceptualizations of political correctness... Thus the foundation of the thesis is just A Mess. And since the key explanation is an incoherent mash-up, the whole of the rest of the books structure retrospectively collapses into less than the sum of its parts.

Wittgenstein's mysticism is ultimately a oneness mysticism, because his assumption is that God must be one, and one who created everything from nothing (ex nihilo) - so that everything is of God and one. 

The failure is that W. does not recognize the asserted oneness and this nature of creation as assumptions - therefore he fails to acknowledge metaphysics.

W. also shares the assumption that the world is made of Things as well as Beings; Things that include all manner of physical abstractions (relating to such as matter, forces, fields, and their mathematical descriptions). 

For instance, one major discussed philosophical example of 'freedom' is making moves on a chessboard: i.e. an abstract mathematical game of un-alive pieces within the bounds of a fixed and unified 'world'. Such a model begs all the vital questions concerning freedom. 

The failure is that to assume un-aliveness as ultimate to reality has such downstream consequences of that Beings, such as ourselves, are ultimately constrained by the un-alive. We are regarded as dwelling among un-aliveness. Un-aliveness even permeates the understanding of God (since Wittgenstein's assumed God, as with many mainstream Christians, must be the ultimate source of un-aliveness). 

By my understanding; a fundamental (albeit common!) misunderstanding of Christianity is almost inevitable given such assumptions. Indeed Wittgenstein's reflections of Christ and Christianity are ethically focused, and to do with conduct in this life - as evidenced by W.'s focus on Tolstoy's version of Christianity. Such entails a Great Deal of moral agonizing about the human condition, and its paradoxical impossibilities. 

That Christianity - on different metaphysical assumptions - might instead be about everlasting life versus death, resurrection versus spirit; and love as creation... such cosmic transformations are out-with the scheme created by Wittgenstein's ultimate assumptions.

In all this Wittgenstein is not distinctive nor unusual, but absolutely mainstream within Western philosophy. He brought a new quality to the conversation, as I say a kind of agonized and confessional quality; and the feeling (partly from his own subjectivity, partly asserted) that he was cutting deeper and making a fresh start on thinking - but this is ultimately an illusion.  

(The fact of Wittgenstein's immediate and sustained success among high status and upper-class British intellectuals of a modernists, anti-Christian (pro-evil) type (e.g. the Bloomsbury group and the Cambridge Apostles) - all this ought to be a red flag waving against the idea of Wittgenstein as a genuinely effective mystical or Christian thinker.   

Therefore, once again (and this has happened to me three or more times before), I leave this latest encounter with Wittgenstein once again regarding him as a rather fascinating character, indeed a somewhat addictive character! -- but one whose actual work is ultimately deeply-conventional and therefore useless to our fundamental needs here-and-now: not just useless but (due to its implicit promises) actually misleading.

Wittgenstein famously stated that the philosopher's job ought to be show a trapped fly the way out of a fly-bottle. The bottle was a container into which the fly had strayed (e.g. in search of aromatic food, being used as bait) but once inside the fly could not escape. Instead, he just buzzed about in a panic. To me, this seems like projection - in that Wittgenstein and his philosophy has served as a fly-trap for many people - both at the time, and since. His personality and work is baited with the promise of autonomy of thinking and escape from system; and the philosophy offers certain, limited, satisfactions. Yet once inside the Wittgensteinian bottle - all genuine escape routes are self-blocked by unexamined assumptions. 

So Wittgenstein will be discovered, eventually, to be as useless and misleading as is the work of the entirety of Western Philosophy - being - as it is - rooted in metaphysical assumptions that are unnoticed, denied; or regarded not as assumptions but as necessary truths of existence. 

Such is our situation. 

The reason for the intractability of our civilizational decline, and why the causes of decline are defended, sustained and abetted (at various levels) by Almost Everybody; is exactly that our ideological/ philosophical roots lie so deep... 

As deep as roots can be, which is as deep as our primary assumptions concerning the nature of reality.  

Note: I should give credit to the fact that - for about two-thirds its length - I was pretty gripped by Hollingworth's account of Wittgenstein's life and work. As academic books go, it is a superior product.

Yet the whole basis of the book is that it is more than just another academic book on Wittgenstein: thus it engages in various 'breaking the fourth wall' and Tristram Shandy-esque strategies of authorial insertion. These are seemingly expressive of sincerity and a perspective from 'life' rather than 'career'. 

But, by the end and overall, I felt instead the gravitational pull of the ordinary academic values, and the modern-Western socio-political assumptions into which academia is now locked by bureaucratic structures - as well as the pervasive leftism of the intellectual class. This constrains all official instances of 'rebellion' by the need to ingratiate oneself to the ethical arbiters of The System - of which the Oxford University Press is an integral element! 

So the initial promise - and the scattered and stimulating insights - only made worse my frustration at the eventual let-down: as if I had been 'taken for a ride', fallen for a line of speil... 

In Ray Monk's biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, there is a striking account of the weekly discussions on the foundations of mathematics between Wittgenstein and Alan Turing. I found myself in agreement with W. and it seemed to me that Turing had been unable to grasp his own error, because he could not free himself from the mathematical thought-world and its assumptions. Turing  could not see, or even acknowledge the reality of, a bigger picture than mathematics.

Wittgenstein was stating that understanding was a simple direct intuitive grasp - when we know that we know; whereas Turing was arguing that we know we understand when the results 'work' - we know mathematics is right because a bridge made using calculations does not fall down - and errors in mathematics will lead to bridges falling down.  

The argument is a version of one in which I have participated many times - on both sides at different points. For Wittgenstein, understanding was the most important thing in the world - his whole life was driven by his need to understand. He therefore saw that there was no relationship between understanding and practical results (as we presume we know them) - that science, mathematics, engineering have nothing to do with understanding.

Turing, in a sense, was saying that understanding doesn't matter; what matters is whether we can predict and manipulate the world to achieve our desires. Thus a computer does not understand what it does - but this doesn't matter if it can do things we find useful.

Wittgenstein would realise that the usefulness of computers is beside the point - it just is not relevant to the question of understanding.

To put it another way, Turing regarded 'models' as the furthest we can go in understanding. Each model is a deliberately simplified (hence ultimately false) description of total-reality; but that doesn't matter because (for Turing) all thinking is some kind of model.

Whereas Wittgenstein regarded understanding as the basis of everything; for Turing understanding would just have been a transient psychological state - ultimately a kind of delusion.

Turing's 'proof' that understanding is models only is to point at the (apparent) achievements of modern life - look at that bridge, that computer; look at modern man's capability... That is the result of models, useful models - and there is no truth beyond usefulness, but no further truth is needed...

Whereas Wittgenstein would say that Turing did not understand him; and Turing did not understand his own lack of understanding. Turing displayed a kind of impatience, an inability or unwillingness to see things how Wittgenstein saw them.

Wittgenstein knew what Turing meant, because Wittgenstein had believed the same himself; but further thinking had led to a simple, direct understanding that revealed that Turing's view was false. Wittgenstein had thought the way Turing did, then moved beyond it into a situation so clear it needed no further justification.

The exchange between Wittgenstein and Turing seems to me a microcosm of many arguments and discussions that go on - or rather that fail to happen because one of the parties simply has not thought long, hard, deeply enough to know that they are wrong; and when that party has 'more important things to do' than achieve the clarity and simplicity to which such thinking will eventually lead.

Thus many clever people (and there are few cleverer than Turing!) are wrong about fundamental matters; not least because they are impatient to get on with their main line of work, research, creative endeavour... Yet they do not escape their wrongness; and the wrongness of Turing is not invalidated by the success of and ubiquity of computers - rather, Turing's error is built-into the modern world: baked into it indeed, since our tests of whether something works have themselves become pragmatic.

So now we have, in effect, the situation of non-understanding computers evaluating the truth (i.e. true understanding) of non-understanding computers - because the matter of real (simple direct, intuitive) understanding has become regarded as merely subjective, psychological, contingent. Modern man therefore demands that the need for understanding be eliminated - and he sets-up procedural systems to evaluate the 'truth' (or 'quality') of science, mathematics, engineering and everything else; without any need for (and indeed deliberately excluding) human understanding.

These systems are supposed to be indifferent to whether or not a person has thought deeply and long, whether they understand or merely manipulate. Indeed there is now a suspicion of, hostility to, anything which is not obvious to 'anybody' - including 'anybody' who has never thought about it and never achieved a state of understanding.

A typical modern bureaucrat (and most modern people are bureaucrats, whether professionally or in their private lives) would be saying to Wittgenstein, over and again: That's just your opinion.

(And anyway, do you want us to live in the stone age, or what?)

Wittgenstein would know that he was right, and he would know this for absolute certain - but probably would not be able to convince anybody else. If he couldn't convince Turing that there was more to understanding than models - what chance would have Wittgenstein have with the average modern middle manager, or academic-careerist, or official, or media propagandist?

That he did go wrong seems obvious - in that his life was intensely sad, angry and pessimistic and he was more tormented by religion than helped - such that his 'last words' "Tell them I've had a wonderful life" seemed astonishing and incommensurable to those who knew him best.

And where he went wrong is not far to seek.

(From Culture and Value page 53)

One of the things Christianity says, I think, is that all sound doctrines are of no avail. One must change one's life. (Or the direction of one's life.)

The first sentence is false - but characteristic. Wittgenstein rejected 'doctrine' and he rejected any 'cosmology' or story or description of the nature of God and reality and Man's relationship and purpose in relation to God and reality - and any account of the specific implications of this description.

But it is - surely - very obviously untrue that these things don't matter to Christianity; at least, it is very hard to think of a Christian exemplar who did not have a belief in doctrine and an understanding of what life is about.



Indeed these things are absolutely essential to any minimally-coherent 'good life'. Wittgenstein placed enormous emphasis on 'good works', on 'helping others'- acts of kindness, altruism, alleviating suffering - but none of this can be done without a prior knowledge of what life is about.

If you do not know what 'good' is, then how could you know you were doing good to others?

Because if you don't know what life is about, then how can you 'help' anybody? You do not even know what 'help' is.



(Not even so minimalist and apparently-uncontroversial a principle as 'alleviation of human suffering' is adequate as a guide for 'doing good' - since this also implies a program for humanely-killing those who suffer now, or fear suffering in the future; and the need for more of his kind of thing is indeed a major theme of modern public discourse on 'euthanasia'. There is always a need to conceptualize suffering in a context of purpose, meaning, principles etc.)



Instinct or doing what seems natural is no assistance, because there are several or many goods, which conflict and clash - and must be prioritized and integrated.



Wittgenstein wanted faith and a New Life, but without believing the truth of anything in particular - hence he insisted on Christianity as a pure, inexplicable and ungrounded psychological change coming upon a person.

But this is grossly incomplete as an account of any actual or long-term-viable Christianity - or, at least, it takes for granted a vast implicit social-cultural grounding.

As it stands, Wittgenstein's account of Christianity sans cosmology, sans doctrine cannot be prevented from toppling-over-into relativism and subjectivism - hence nihilistic nonsense. And this has been Wittgenstein's major philosophical legacy.



The interesting question is why Wittgenstein made such an obvious and gross blunder - did he really not perceive the inadequacy of his assertions? Surely his own life (and the lives of people around him - many of whom were exemplars of hyper-intelligent glib shallowness and self-indulgence) refuted his expressed views?

Or was it a psychological blind spot - something Wittgenstein personally could not do, so he assumed it was a universal incapacity?

Or was there a valid reason - such that Wittgenstein simply could not commit himself fully to Christian doctrines and cosmology as he knew them? I suspect that this was the real answer. For example, he expressed profound reservations about Predestination, and seemed very averse to scholastic philosophy in Roman Catholicism - probably there were others.



The way I suppose it worked was something like the following: Wittgenstein could not accept the validity of Predestination as he understood it; and while he accepted that there may be a higher sense in which it was true - he could not simply take that on trust when it was insisted that he believe, make public avowal of the truth of, predestination here and now.

(Such a declaration would be required before Wittgenstein would be qualified and entitled to become a church member of some (Calvinistic?) Protestant denominations, which he presumably felt otherwise attracted towards.)

Something similar probably applied to the necessity for acknowledging the ultimate validity of the philosophical system of Thomism (including Aquinas's proofs of the existence of God, which W particularly objected-to) within the Roman Catholic church.



Since Wittgenstein could not with honesty swear to the truth and validity of certain core doctrines or philosophical propositions, regarded as essential for all members, there was simply no possibility of Wittgenstein becoming a church member in any of the denominations of which he knew.

Yet he quite possibly regarded church membership as essential to the status of being a publicly-identified Christian. So he was stuck - outside of any actual denomination, yet extremely concerned with Christianity: 'merely' a simple believer in the reality of Christianity in his own life, and the lives of others.

So Wittgenstein reduced the definition of Christianity to being something inferred from 'the difference it makes to a person's life' - which is correct but incomplete.

In trying to make sense of his (chronic, painful) situation; Wittgenstein tried to argue that doctrines were not a necessary part of Christianity, since it was doctrines which kept him out of the churches.

In a limited sense, then, this hostility to Christian doctrine was an accurate specific observation - Wittgenstein himself was a Christian despite being unable publicly to assent to some specific doctrines variously regarded as crucial to church membership by the known Christian denominations - but as a general principle the hostility to Christian doctrine, and statements that Christianity did not require doctrine, was false: an error.

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I was reading the posthumous collection of Wittgenstein's aphorisms called Culture and Value yesterday - focusing on the references to Christianity across his whole adult life, in the midst of an exceptionally prolonged and severe migraine and its treatment - so I was in a particularly intense and peculiar frame of mind.

For the first time, it struck me as obvious that Wittgenstein was a serious and sincere 'seeker' by Pascal's definition, hence Wittgenstein certainly was (in an ultimate sense) A Christian - despite that there was probably no time in his life when he could or would have stated : I Am A Christian.

This is a new understanding for me because I was introduced to Wittgenstein by the the ultra-liberal Christian-apostate Don Cuppitt - who, I now perceive, was selectively misrepresenting W to be arguing for a non-realistic, 'as if', culturally-embedded, way-of-living such as Cuppitt believed-in (before he abandoned even this vestige). I also encountered Wittgenstein via Richard Rorty, who was the epitome of urbane, bland, self-contradictory Leftist postmodernity. Indeed, all the books I read about W were from this subjectivist, relativist, politically-correct perspective - even one by a Dominican Friar (this will surprise nobody who knows what they are like).

But looking across the sweep of C and V, it is crystal clear that W was thinking and writing about real Christianity, and not the Leftism-in-disguise fake of the modern mainstream churches. Indeed, it is striking how very 'reactionary' Wittgenstein was - given that he became the darling of progressive academics and radical artists (or, at least, they took what they wanted from W and left-behind what W regarded as most important).

I found many passages were striking, in my peculiar state of mind - some seemed to be misunderstandings, for example in relation to miracles, others seemed to get at the root of things.

Page 49e Para 3 from 1946:

In former times people went into monasteries. Were they stupid or insensitive people? - Well, if people like that found they needed to take such measures in order to be able to go on living, the problem cannot be an easy one!

For W the problem was not an easy one, it was indeed the need for an ultimate underpinning. He recognized that this was not a matter of logic. He also - in practice, for constitutional reasons which he could not overcome - could not join any human association - hence could not be a member of a church. All this made it difficult for W to know what he was, or what to do about it.

I think what was probably needed for him was to understand that faith of the kind he wanted and needed is based in a personal 'testimony', on experience - which can come from miracles, revelations or in prayer - and this really is the bottom line. To look to validate the testimony by other means, is to destroy the testimony.

Wittgenstein knew what faith was not based-on, but I think he never knew what it was based-on. Probably because none of the churches he encountered put this up-front, all had very different emphases.  

In the end this will not have affected Wittgenstein's salvation - that was assured by his sincere and prolonged seeking for God - but it did mean that W never got beyond the threshold of Christianity, never progressed far on the path of theosis.

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I used to be very interested by Wittgenstein and his ideas

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=wittgenstein

although I now regard both W. and my interest in him as mistaken.

One aspect which I recall was that the only thing which enraged Wittgenstein more than people using his ideas without full attribution, was people using his ideas with full attribution - because they always misunderstood and misrepresented the ideas.

Wittgenstein himself did not publish anything after Tractatus - nothing of his 'late' philosophy; so this meant that there was only one way to know what W. was saying and that was to hear him say it - in his actual presence. And to be allowed to do this, one had to be a disciple.

So W. had disciples whom he controlled, not colleagues; and operated as a holy man or guru, not as an academic. This is, indeed, the basis of his appeal.

It is also a proper way to proceed in education - i.e. apprenticeship. Unfortunately, with his 'late' philosophy, W. did not really have anything worth teaching - as he himself was the first to assert, and was confirmed by W.s main patron and supporter Bertrand Russell.

In consequence, there was a weird cult of nothingness - moralistically critiqueing and denying this, then that, then something else... but from no discernible basis - swirling around the personality of Wittgenstein (and continually riven by accusations of misunderstanding and misrepresentation); and this cult proved extremely enduring: it was certainly still going strong twenty-five years ago (when I last looked).

But the phenomenon is fascinating. Of course Wittgenstein was a compellingly intense and uncompromising character - a one off; but it is remarkable that he became by far the most influential philosopher in the sphere of British philosophy - 'despite' - or was it precisely because - he 1. published nothing and 2. had nothing to say and 3. did his utmost to prevent anybody else from referencing or discussing his work.

I believe that genius is essentially a combination of high intelligence, and high creativity (in the sense of a semi-psychotic, trance-like ability to think poetically and with loose-associations) - plus sufficient application to work very hard on those subjects which really inspire the genius.

A genius also needs an awkward personality, or else he will simply fit-in with the normal social expectations; and sufficient autonomy that this misfit status does not bother him.

(Note: these ideas mostly derive from HJ Eysenck's book - Genius.) 

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According to most studies, it looks as if most geniuses were of *very* high intelligence (general intelligence, 'g' or IQ) - being something like three or more standard deviations above average (IQ 145 plus when the average IQ is defined as 100 and the standard deviation as 15).

However, in my reading of the biographies of geniuses, some seem to be more more normal in intelligence than this - certainly in the top ten percent, say IQ 120 plus, but not more.

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Just for fun, I will nominate Ludwig Wittgenstein as one of these.

To my mind, Wittgenstein seems to have a much lower IQ than most philosophers, he approaches things in a relatively straightforward manner. What is unusual about Wittgenstein is not his ability to think abstractly, reason extensively and learn rapidly -  but his amazing persistence at picking away, with searing intensity and poetic expressivity, year after year, again and again, at matters which most people would regard as minutiae.

For what it is worth, Wittgenstein's academic record was very good but not amazing - which is at least consistent with the above.

Any other suggestions of only-moderately-high IQ-geniuses?

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[I am assuming that Wittgenstein really was a genius, since he was so massively influential in 20th century philosophy - and was rated so highly by extremely intelligent people such as Bertrand Russell and Elizabeth Anscombe. However, Wittgenstein seems to me always to have been wrong about everything -  and indeed twentieth century philosophy is always wrong about everything; so maybe Wittgenstein was not a genius but a nutter who happened to be taken seriously by a silly and corrupt area of intellectual endeavor, due to other aspects of his personality which led to a cult growing around him.]

I have thought a great deal about education - what it  has been, is, and should be; but I have always been aware that formal or systematic, education as we know it is an unnatural thing. In simpler tribal societies there is simply people spending time together, and what eventuates from that.

Time together is of the essence. There isn't really any 'teaching' - more a matter of showing, of letting people observe. The main motivation comes from the learner, who wants to become able to know and do things; the 'teacher' mainly 'allows' the learner to spend time with him.

This is more like apprenticeship; and I experienced a fair bit of apprenticeship in medicine and laboratory science; in the gaps between a great deal more formal instruction and testing.

In the kind of education we get in schools, colleges, and the like - this original kind of education, therefore, happens (when it does happen, which is seldom or never) in the gaps in the curriculum, the the non-systematic parts of the experience; unplanned, unexamined.

The main skill is to seize the moment - which is , again, mostly a matter of having the right kind of motivation.

The philosopher Wittgenstein gave classes of this kind - in which a group of people would be allowed to be in attendance while Wittgenstein was doing philosophy, aloud. He was working at things that preoccupied him, while other people were in the room.

The only formal element was that this happened at a specific place and time (which is, in actually, a pretty tight constraint, when it comes to creative work). There was no product, and no exams. From a student's perspective; Wittgenstein's education was something that happened while they were at college - it was absolutely distinct from the degree curriculum, although some students later (apparently) regarded it as the major experience of their lives.

Wittgenstein had a need for company too (in some phases of his life) and favoured people were allowed to 'hang-out' with W. in an unstructured, sustained and more-or-less social kind of way (going for walks, to the movies - sitting in the middle of the front row etc); although it might be closer to the truth to say that these individuals were required to be at W's beck and call as he wanted them (or else be excluded from the charmed circle). 

Trying to communicate one's deepest understandings to 'other people' is a different thing; since it is led by the teacher's interest, rather than the student's. Perhaps a lot of it is that we want people with whom we can communicate profoundly on particular matters that may obsess us - but few others, and are therefore tempted to shape other people into suitable companions!

This is the great appeal of a group like The Inklings. For a while, they were near to the Platonic ideal of what we crave in our communication.

The lesson of biographies is that this 'shaping of other people' seldom works, but the attempt can itself be creative and clarifying for the would-be teacher (as well as frustrating and a waste of time). This creative clarification can be the main (or only) benefit of writing a book; which is - after all - almost-never read with the degree of comprehension and agreement that the author hopes for.

Conversely, what we (as 'student') get from a book that influences us, may well be very different from what the author hoped. Very, very seldom does the writing and reading of a book lead to the profound communication that the author hope for while in the process of making it; very seldom does 'top down' education actually happen.

In sum, real 'education' is very rare and essentially uncontrollable; and has almost nothing to do with systematic, professional education; and the more that is done to make formal education more 'efficient' and 'accountable' - the more certainly any possibility of real education will be excluded.

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Reading biographies and memoirs - as I do - I am often struck by the vivid, detailed recall of those who met eminent people - and contrast it with my own hazy recollections of meeting the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._E._M._Anscombe -

who was, if not exactly eminent, someone that appears as a minor but significant figure in the annals of the twentieth century in relation both to Wittgenstein and to C.S. Lewis. Lewis, for example, regarded her as much more intelligent than he was.

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The meeting was, I am pretty sure, in the summer or autumn of 1985, and comes from a rather lost episode of my young adult life (lost, because it did not lead on to anything), while I was working on my doctorate in neuroendocrinology.  I have no written evidence from this period, and I didn't discuss my plans very widely, so I am forced to operate purely on the basis of memory.

I was, at the time, much under the spell of Wittgenstein, and (therefore?) wanting to study philosophy as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge on an accelerated (2 year instead of 3 year) degree - possible because I was already a (medical) graduate.

I must have written to some people, and arranged some meetings and then I travelled to Cambridge where I had lunch with Anscombe at her college New Hall, then in the afternoon met with the admissions tutor of Trinity and their philosophy tutor (Nick Denyer).

So I was probably with Anscombe for an hour and a half or so. What do I recall?

*

Of the lady, that she struck me a very much the same type as the minor country gentry I had encountered in Somerset and Northumberland; a chunky, pugnacious and somewhat 'masculine' elderly woman (of course, masculine or not, she had had numerous children). Her speech was clipped and 'military' in style, the content I remember as cliched and at a superficial social level.

Her car was very muddy and full of bits and pieces.

The lunch at New Hall, and the college itself, I can picture as being similar to, but somewhat better than, a secondary school dinner - there was some kind of gimmick by which the lunch counter rose up out of the floor (electrically powered) to bring up food from the kitchens below, I imagine. In general I felt rather underwhelmed, disappointed.

The only remark I can recollect was in response to a query about her meeting with Wittgenstein - she said something about having heard about him while she was studying in Oxford, then concluding this to comment that 'of course, he had a first-rate mind'. This struck me at the time as a characteristic bit of Cambridge boilerplate.

*

So, in my memory at least, I have to admit that I was not impressed by G.E.M Anscombe, indeed I rather disliked her - yet of course she was both generous and tolerant to meet up with me, give me lunch, and talk with me - I who was someone merely considering applying to Trinity, and with no connection with her or with the university. I hope that I was suitably grateful.

(And I very much doubt whether G.E.M Anscombe was at all impressed with me! I can't recall saying anything which, even momentarily, captured her attention or interest. Quite likely, this was a basis of my slight feeling of resentment - that I did not, could not, impress her? Maybe I was hoping to be recognized as 'the next Wittgenstein'? - that unlikely notion would indeed be entirely consistent with my self-conceit of that era.)

*

The episode led nowhere because, although I was indeed offered a place at Trinity to read philosophy, when I saw the size of the college fees (on top of the university fees and the need to support myself for two years of very hard academic work) it was very obvious that I could not afford it.

But also, the visit had rather put me off the idea of studying undergraduate philosophy at Trinity, Cambridge; as I recall I was glad of a cast-iron excuse not to follow-through my plans.

In the event, I went to Durham to study for an MA by thesis in English (only one year, and with a British Academy scholarship - so easily affordable) - and this turned out to be a much more fruitful path for me.

*

(Although Durham English did not cure me of Wittgenstien - in fact things got even worse as I continued reading philosophy alongside the English, and moved on to Richard Rorty and deep into the lunacy of 'postmodern' thinking, which I had successfully resisted up to that point. It took a few more years to extricate myself from that mess.)

*

The Cambridge affair now feels like a near miss or lucky escape - a madness of a few weeks - on those rare occasions I remember it; and maybe that interpretation colours or extinguishes my memories.

But what a feeble set of recollections I have concerning this meeting!

For some people, such a meeting might have provided sufficient incident to fill a 15 000 word memoir!

*

From Ludwig Wittgenstein a memoir, by Norman Malcolm

Wittgenstein did once say that he thought that he could understand the conception of God, insofar as it is involved in one's awareness of one's sin and guilt. He added that he could Not understand the concept of a creator... The notion of a being Making The World had no intelligibility to him at all.

**

How utterly extraordinary that a Great Philosopher found the notion of a creator God not untrue but incomprehensible, when every child and almost every human being in the history of the world found it natural, spontaneous, obvious that the world was created.

How extraordinary that anyone could suppose that strong emotions of sin and guilt were the best reason to believe in a God - but That God was Not a creator.

Yet such extraordinary stuff is now normal, mainstream, official, the basis of our society.

It's as if our world has been made by people who have something seriously wrong with them, something missing - and have remade life in their own, distorted and deficient, image...

**

Note: I should make clear that for significant periods I myself believed and expounded exactly this extraordinary stuff - so I know its whys and wherefores from the inside.

Further note: Previous posts on Wittgenstein.

I was interesting in philosophy from my late teens; and then in my mid-twenties became gripped by some philosophical problems to the point that they seemed of vital importance to sort-out, in some way. 

These rather abstract problems - such as about how we could know something, and be sure ("certain") that we knew, what did knowing mean? etc - seemed also very relevant to my then personal happiness, and my ability to make life-choices, and to lead a satisfying life in my future. 

I had a general hunch that if I questioned and questioned, rigorously and honestly, I would reach a bedrock of solid truth that would satisfy me, and upon which I could build my life. 

Being then young and gregarious; I thought of philosophy as a group activity; and I wanted above all to be able to discuss it - A Lot - until I got to the bottom of these things. It hurt to put off this discussing, yet of course there was nobody in my circle that wanted to talk (and talk!) about the things that seemed important to me. 

Nonetheless, I though that maybe I could find a situation in which I might be guided to the right sources, and find such conversation. I went to a couple of evening classes, but I presumably did not find them to be what I wanted, because I quickly dropped out of the courses. 

The problem was, at root, I was being taught about the stuff on the course - whereas I wanted to work on what seemed important to me: here, now. I did not want to put-off my life until later. 

So I thought maybe I could go back to university and do a philosophy bachelors degree. I realized that this would still have the problem of being taught other stuff; but I thought that I would there be able to spend a lot of consecutive time on working at the problems that really interested me, I hoped I would find the conversation I wanted; and at the end of it get credentials by which people would 'take me seriously' when I reached my own conclusions. 

There was a mixture of wanting to make a life-commitment - to show to myself (perhaps) that I was serious about this stuff, and of expediency. 

Since I had found Wittgenstein's On Certainty to be discussing almost exactly what concerned me - I went so far as to arrange to study philosophy at his college (Trinity) in Cambridge but in two years instead of three (shortened because I already had a degree); my recollection is that I was to begin the degree in autumn 1986. 

But I did not proceed with this plan, partly because I had seriously underestimated the extra cost of college fees (on top of university fees), and partly because my experience of meeting and talking with three philosophy academics at Cambridge (including Wittgenstein's pupil Elizabeth Anscombe) was disappointing. 

You see; reading about the best old philosophers - and I had been especially reading about some of the more ancient and more 'existential' ones (and in this respect Wittgenstein was a throwback); you get the impression of people whose lives were dedicated to the 'love of wisdom' - but meeting modern philosophers, you meet professional academics whose specialty is philosophy (although some of them can act the part of the old-style type - whether in person or in print). 

This was, of course, my own stupid fault. It was a case of wanting something exact but incoherent that could not be had, and then being disappointed when I could not get it! 

Instead of a bachelors in philosophy, I ended by doing a masters in english literature; but spending about half that year reading philosophy, and informally attending philosophy seminars, and talking to a few philosophers - albeit rather superficially because our interests were so different.

Over the following years; I gradually realized that philosophy was really important to me (e.g. I continued attending seminars while I was on the faculty at Glasgow University), but that it was something I would mostly need to do by myself - navigating my way to the relevant authors and ideas, and working my way through the ideas. 

For a few years I did have a lot of genuine philosophical conversations with a colleague (Peter Andras) about Niklaus Luhmann's Systems Theory - so I did end up having that experience. 

I mean really working ('doing' philosophy, as Wittgenstein called it - but in his case it sound like a kind of monologue to disciples, rather than genuinely dyadic); in real time, sticking to the detail of specific and mutually fascinating ideas.

Talking on and past the surfaces that are usual in social chit chat so that personality falls away - being led by the ideas rather than politeness, or trying to be interesting; the conventions and considerations of sociability and the other limitations that constrains normal discourse to be little more than amusing or arguing for dominance. 

Philosophical conversation turned out to be very helpful in grasping the (already defined) theory, and at developing applications and implications. 

But - since two people are always somewhat different in the content and direction of their lives and destinies - conversation also can have a constraining effect on development and learning. And therefore it became necessary to return to working (essentially) on my own at philosophy. 

My impression was that serious conversation about philosophy is only sometimes and temporarily possible, when the interests of two (maybe more) people happen to converge and run together for a while; but that this has a natural lifespan of value, after which it would become routinized, professionalized, or merely sociable. 

 

In other words, and despite the allure of Platonic Dialogues - which are, after all, a kind of fiction; and also seem like expositions of ready-made philosophy, rather than depicting a process of genuine discovery - I have come to believe that philosophy is in its essence a solitary activity. 

If we don't do it ourselves; there is nobody that can do it for us. 

Indeed, given all the constraints and difficulties, it is nearly always easier and more philosophically helpful to engage deeply with a book than with a person. And even better to debate 'with oneself'; in the sense that we ought to become our own best critics. 

And the whole business of following set curricula, performing exercises and examinations, developing professional expertise, or being guided by a canon of required authors; that stuff constitutes an activity which is something-else other than real philosophy. 

*

I have said some mean things about Wittgenstein, but am forced to admit that my method in this blog has been much the same as his.

*

From Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein (translated by Peter Winch)


"If I am thinking about a topic just for myself and not with a view to writing a book, I jump all round it; that is the only way of thinking that comes naturally to me.

"Forcing my thoughts into an ordered sequence is a torment for me. Is it even worth attempting now?

"I squander an unspeakable amount of effort making an arrangement of my thoughts which may have no value at all."

[from 1937]

*

"Each of the sentences I write is trying to say the whole thing, i.e. the same thing over and over again; it is as though they were all simply views of one object seen from different angles."

(...)

"One is constructive and picks up one stone after another, the other keeps taking hold of the same thing."

[From 1930]

***

This has not always been the case - most of my earlier writings have been theses of essay length; especially my scientific and polemical writings.

But I have been forced into this business of jumping-all-around political correctness, because I can't seem to 'get' it into a thesis.

Is this the nature of the subject (it is large: the entire world view of mainstream modern intellectual life in the West), or is it simply because I have not yet understood it?

At the moment, I am still not sure.

I shall just have to keep picking-up one piece after another until clarity strikes, or I am struck-down, or I get fed-up of the whole business...

*

*
Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein translated by Peter Winch (1997) - a note from 1937:

Why is ... Scripture so unclear? 

If we want to warn someone of a terrible danger, do we go about it by telling him a riddle whose solution will be the warning? 

- But who is to say that the Scripture really is unclear? Isn't it possible that it was essential in this case to 'tell a riddle'? And that, on the other hand, giving a more direct warning would necessarily have had the wrong effect? 

God has four people recount the life of his incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies - but might we not say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite averagely historically plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing?

So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due. I.e. what you are supposed to see cannot be communicated even by the best and most accurate historian; and therefore a mediocre account suffices, is even to be preferred.

For that too can tell you what you are supposed to be told. (Roughly in the way a mediocre stage set can be better than a sophisticated one, painted trees better than real ones, - because these might distract attention from what matters.)

*

Comment. I think this is right. I read the passage nearly thirty years ago (when I was an atheist) and it has stuck in my mind since - although I did not re-read it until today.

My understanding of what Wittgenstein says is that the form of the Gospels (and of the Bible as a whole) tells us the nature of the doctrine which is being communicated

- Negatively that the doctrine is not about a mass of precise statements, and positively that what is important about it is being clearly communicated both despite and because of the unclarities of its communication.

In other words, if (as we believe) Scripture is true, then it is also clear - clear enough, clear in the necessary ways. 

*

This fits my oft-stated conviction that the proof-texting/ chapter-and-verse way of reading scripture segmentally - as if it was a law book or list of rules - obscures its truth and leads to confusion and conflict.

(And the same applies to abstracted summaries such as the Catholic catechisms and the Thirty Nine Articles and the Westminster Confession and Articles of Faith.)

Or, at least, such a method requires constant checking back against the primary truth of scripture; which is to be found in the simple overall truths rather than the parts.

(Just as the morality of good law is to be found in the spirit, and not in the letter - and indeed when the letter of the law is - rarely - good, this is usually for the wrong reason.)
*

 I'm currently rereading George Malcolm's memoir of Wittgenstein, and (first read) a short biography of Graves by Bruce King. Graves was a very early craze of mine, beginning age 14; and I began on Wittgenstein about a decade later. 

This time I'm struck by similarities between them. Both ruling class, both in the avant garde (contemporary members of the same circles): and/also sexually Platonic by nature. Both capable of "superb" statement - charisma and/or self-righteous and aggressive arrogance. 

Both made insightful diagnoses of the civilizational problems, both on the wrong side when it came to answers - their ultimate affiliations were to their "class", hence (in the twentieth century West) on the side opposing God and divine creation.

*

Pride is the primary and worst of Christian sins, therefore we tend to guard against Pride but also tend to be ready to diagnose it in others.

Indeed, it is much easier to perceive Pride in others than in oneself - and this is often a major blind-spot.

(Hence Jesus's parable of the mote and the beam in the eye, in the New Testament).

*

But Despair (i.e. hope-less-ness - therefore denial of the Truth of the Christian Good News) is also a 'major sin' - and it may be that Despair is the most characteristic modern sin.

Certainly, modern society looks most like a society in which people are frantically trying to stave-off Despair by sensation-seeking, powerful stimuli such as sex, distraction, intoxication...

But, unlike Pride, and in this respect the opposite of Pride, it is easier to discern Despair in onself than in other people.

*

So the basic situation is that we tend to over-diagnose Pride and under diagnose Despair in other people.

Yet for me personally, I know that the fight against Despair has been a very big thing in my life; and I also know that this has been the case for several of the people whose biographies I have read most deeply: for example the Inkling Charles Williams.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/light-on-very-strange-personality.html

Another example would be the philosopher Wittgenstein.

*

My point is that what primarily motivates a person, and perhaps leads to their obvious sinfulness, their errors - may be Despair and the fight against Despair - rather than Pride-full-ness.

And when this is the truth of the situation, it is likely that there will be a profound misunderstanding.

*

A person prone to Despair may be in a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment struggle to keep-going, keep-motivated; and may seek stimulus and distraction like a drug addict seeks a fix - and this will lead him into all manner of sins and wickedness - and then to compound the sin by defending and justifying his actions.

*

Yet, seeing the sins and wickedness, another person might well ascribe them to Pride - indeed is more likely to ascribe them to Pride; but they would be wrong.

And the Despairing man may conceal the root of his behaviour, since Despair is a feeble and weak thing - and anyway, if he does admit to his Despair, he will very likely be ignored or disbelieved; or else Despair will not be given the primary role which in fact it has in his Life.

Because those who are not so prone to Despair simply cannot understand or believe its primary and shaping role in some lives.

**


I recognize marriage and family as the only potentially effective antidote to Despair - yet utterly precarious in this mortal world; and I believe that that this fact has not merely personal but cosmic significance. Charles Williams knew that only his wife, his marriage, could shield him from Despair - Wittgenstein (as a mostly-celibate homosexual) tragically never experienced this. 

*

I am continuing to read-/ listen-through Philip K Dick's journal Exegesis (2011); and continuing to find it just what I need, just now. Indeed, of its kind (a private document of spiritual examination and speculation) I can only compare it with Pascal's Pensees, or Wittgenstein's notebooks.

Especially in its first four years; the Exegesis has the advantage and disadvantage of being genuinely private notations, for personal consumption - whereas Pascal and Wittgenstein were writing with an eye on future publication - this means the Exegesis is honest to the point of being embarrassing (like watching somebody else's dreams).

I am struck by the fact that PKD was (and is) surrounded by non-religious, non-Christians - who have consistently failed to take seriously the Christian revelations of his last eight years (described by author Brian Aldiss as that God and Madness 'got him'); while orthodox Christians are (understandably!) repelled by Dick's record as five-times married, drug abuser and addict, parasuicide and mental patient etc.

Anyway, the outcome is that PKD was working alone, and that his post-mortem admirers and critics explain Exegesis by (essentially) explaining-it-away - or at least never taking his revelatory experiences as qualitatively how Dick himself regarded them. 

In section 22:24 - about 44% through the volume, and in 1978) PKD is speculating on the covert significance of his novel A Maze of Death (1970); which I happened to finish yesterday. Here he uses the word Maze to refer to what we might term the Matrix, or (my term) Virtuality - which is the man-made world of images, ideas, propaganda, officialdom and bureaucracy and (in general) mass/ social media. I've added explanatory links and emphases; my cuts are indicated thus...

**

[22:24] It is the nature of the maze, which is quasi-alive, to thwart knowledge. Maze and knowledge are antithetical; also maze and reality are antithetical. Out of this I derive: knowledge and reality are interrelated. 

So we can expect the active deceptivity of the maze to interfere with our ability to know, which means that it will perpetually occlude us in every way possible... Further, that we are occluded will be a fact occluded off from us...

Yaldabaoth is the quasi-mind of the maze, not its creator—since in fact it does not really exist; it is a condition or state we’ve been put in, not a world or place at all; all it really consists of is info fired by the two info-processing sources. 

The quasi-mind of the maze is as if insane, senselessly generating and destroying: it is like a wizard generating illusion upon illusion which shift and change constantly (thus giving rise to the spurious impression of the passage of time). 

It is the plan of the maze to establish and maintain disorder, because out of disorder arises the senseless—a condition which promotes intellectual confusion on our part, which aids in defeating our attempt to understand—which is to say, possess knowledge: the essential thing we must have if we are to triumph over the maze. Thus maze equals disorder or anti-Gnosis. 

No system of thought derived through our senses or a priori is going to be correct due to the calculated noise or inexplicability generated by the maze—only revealed Gnosis emanating from outside the maze—i.e., by/through Zebra—will be of any use. 

What is required of us is that we abandon both our reasoning power (as occluded or impaired) and our percept-system results (likewise) and try to hear the “low, murmuring voice” from outside the maze. This requires the ordeal of terror and destruction of our false self...

“Outward” explicability and inner occlusion are the twin weapons of the maze: that [process] which makes no sense, is fed to that percept and cognitive system which is (unknown to itself) impaired. 

The result is hopeless confusion, the antithesis of Gnosis. You have a deliberately damaged mind trying hopelessly to make sense out of a reality (and process) which adds up to nothing anyhow: a lethal combination, but quite in keeping with the purpose and nature of the maze and its quasi-mind; this is why we should speak of it as a maze—and a good one! 

Every hypostasis, intellectual or moral, is doomed to prove a failure; events will defeat it and expose its inaccuracy. Even nihilism and pessimism don’t always accurately depict the real situation: calculated runs of moral and intellectual order are introduced to cause us to keep trying to make sense out of what we are compelled to live through. Irony and paradox abound, and a constant calculated frustration of expectation and hope, a purposeful ruin of plans. 

The maze’s quasi-mind acts in a perverse way, but it is not malignant or malicious, just “insane”—which is to say irrational. This is why virtually every system of human thought simultaneously works and does not quite (perfectly) work. 

Until finally you get into ultimate absurdities, as “the theory alters the reality it describes,”... which, when you uncover this, you are faced with the obvious impossibility of ever correctly formulating a workable world view—without knowing why you can’t!

**

This strikes me as a brilliant prefiguring of what has become much more obvious in the past forty years - the public/ media/ bureaucratic 'Matrix' world as we now experience it.

Elsewhere, PKD describes how we brilliantly constructed the Maze so that it would be realer-than-real and could fool us, and then we voluntarily entered the Maze with the hubristic conviction that 'I' am too smart to be fooled by it; then unsurprisingly, once inside we took it for real - and were trapped. Trapped, until or if there is some outside intervention that will take us out from the Maze - i.e. Jesus Christ.    

I would add that the Maze is only half the story; and the other half is that - having reduced the populations of The West to the state of chronic stunned perplexity and angst; the same System that has made the virtuality then offers an arbitrary but mandatory structure of order: international laws, micro-regulations and coercive enforcements; underpinned by methods of onmi-surveillance - leading to the modern form of totalitarianism that we see unfolding on a daily basis.

And that is the mainstream dominant-culture choice: live in permanently confusing chaos, or accept arbitrary tyranny (or some combination of chaos and tyranny - which , indeed, seems to work best).

*
I have been reading in Spengler's big book over the past few days ('reading in' means I have only sampled it - by no means read it all).

I have had a shot at Decline of the West before, about ten years ago I think; but then I was reading it on recommendation whereas this time I was reading it because I wanted to - consequently this time was much more rewarding.

Indeed, to my great surprise, I found the introduction and early chapters to be absolutely superb metaphysics (i.e. 'first philosophy', about the primary nature of reality and our concepts of it - not history) - it was about the nature of knowing and the deficiencies of thinking in terms of causality. To me, it seems more profound than the monism/ pluralism distinction I have been using recently (derived from William James, and lying behind Wittgenstein's late work).

I have read other works in this line of 'lebensphilosophie', such as Dilthey, which was popular and dominant in German academia and literary culture of the late 19th and early 20th century, but nothing I have come across before was anything like so good as Spengler.

On the basis of these early chapters of DotW, I would regard Spengler as being in the first rank as a modern writer on metaphysics. Of course, I will need to go back over this again soon - because it was too much to take in at one go.

As for the rest of the book, the bulk of it and the best known part, it contains all sorts of insights - but I often got bogged down.

The lesson I take away is as follows: 100 years ago Spengler wrote that the culture of the West was dead, and this was generally accepted by many of the deepest and most thoughtful thinkers of Central Europe (Wittgenstein for instance) - not because Spengler said it, but because they already knew it.

That is our present situation and has been for five generations - nowadays, we are not awaiting nor even experiencing the death of the West, we are living at least a century after it has happened! - We are currently living in the decaying of the already-dead West.

That seems to make sense of the things that Spengler did not predict, did not imagine - the literal insanity of political correctness, the aggressive official enforcement of ridiculous lies and inversions of reality, virtue, truth and beauty.

One aspect Spengler remarked-on which is illustrative and probably a deep poetic truth: that (in contrasting men and women) women embody destiny; women are history - bound-up in the process, so that it is wrong to talk of causality. So we need to look at what women are, generically - rather than what men say - in evaluating Western culture.

And that is the measure of our situation.

*

*

Suppose that genius benefits group fitness rather than individual fitness, as seems likely to be the case - then this is a precarious situation.

If genius led to higher fitness, then the proportion of geniuses in a population would increase with each generation. But if genius is group selected then the genetic consequence of a genius is to expand the group - and this rising tide of group fitness will raise the boat of genius.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-reality-of-group-selection-and-not.html

*

A group-selection account of genius therefore (I think) suggests that genius grows in an expanding group, an expanding population - the outcome of genius being the expansion of that population - and the situation can only be sustained if the consequences of that expanding population include maintaining and promoting the causal requisites of more geniuses.

I think it is probably correct that each genius is a one-off - sui generis - not as a matter of necessity, but mostly because of the extreme unlikelihood of the occurrence same combination of abilities and personality factors.

This means that there is NOT a specific and definable 'genius-type' - which further means there cannot be a system for recognizing and promoting geniuses.

*

Which means that genius-type creativity cannot be taught, and can indeed only be described in a broad brush terms.

*

Add to the mix that geniuses are nearly always (not always) troublesome in one way or another - this goes with the territory because even if you cannot say with precision what the genius does do, what he does NOT doe is think like other people - and what kind of personality he does NOT have is one that goes with the flow of social consensus.

*

There are many consequences of this way of understanding genius - and one is that genius is tolerated rather than encouraged - and this especially applies at the local level of the people living around and with the genius - these will experience the problems of genius, but will not benefit from the genius any more than the rest of society.

Since the benefits of genius are general, there is an incentive, therefore, to shift the costs - let someone else, some other group, employ the genius and let them put up with him!

*

Further more, due to the activities of genius, a society, more exactly a human group - that group within which the genius functions - may abruptly switch from being one which tolerates genius for the sake of what he offers, to one which has... well some other attitude that could be actively anti-genius, or merely conformist, or short-termist, or non-functional...

(Non-functional in the sense that what genius offers is ultimately greater functionality, greater efficiency and/or effectiveness at some function - and if a group stops being concerned about functions, then there is no reason to  tolerate genius.)

**

My reason for exploring this point is that at some point in the past few decades, British society went from being one which in practice tolerated genius, to one which is hostile to genius - and this can be seen at almost every level.

To read of such difficult, annoying, disruptive geniuses as Dirac or Wittgenstein, and then to realize that that were Professors at Cambridge - is to recognize that such characters would nowadays get nowhere near a Cambridge chair - not least because actual functional ability is not regarded as of primary importance in modern Britain.

I personally know of examples of supremely able and creative and productive people (as close to genius as we now get) who have been in practice (and for many and various 'excuses') excluded from positions in UK universities - not just once but repeatedly.

Mediocrity is zealously enforced by Head Girl types (of both sexes) whose sole concern is their own social micro-environment.

*

Modern Britain values Leftist ideals far, far more highly than the ability to do your 'job' - and I mean job in the ideal sense of performing a distinctive function.

What happens now is that instead of selecting people on the basis of how they do the job, the job is redefined to include the kind of people you want to select. 

(This is, of course, the bureaucratic way of doing things - in which the bottom line is satisfying other bureaucrats whose bottom line is satisfying other bureaucrats - with bureaucratic 'turtles all the way down' and no bottom line of reality.)


So, in such a world as modern Britain, why tolerate difficult characters whose 'only' recommendation is that they are supremely good at the real job? 

*

Thus a society with a high concentration of effective geniuses flipped quite suddenly into a society which is in practice and almost universally (at the relevant level of effect) actively anti-genius, selecting against genius, excluding of genius.

And the whole thing is denied by the simple expedient of re-labelling: in which some creative nonentity (which high status or a nutter) is simply stated to be a genius, talked about as a genius - probably given awards and medals for being a genius - and the concept of genius is thereby relativized and even further discredited!

*

What finally cured me of any notion of progress in philosophy as a thought-tradition was reading a history of philosophy from a philosopher that I respect; and who has argued well in favour of the potential for philosophy to be the kind of subject that does exhibit progress.

The book is: Alasdair MacIntyre. God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.

To me, in contrast, the book showed nothing but the zig-zags of academic fashion.

On the other hand, my own personal and self-validated philosophy has indeed progressed - from incoherent harmfulness to something much better.

So, solid experience confirms that philosophy is objective and progress is possible for an individuals during his lifespan. But not at the group level and across generations.

This explains why real philosophy has often returned to the primary sources (e.g. reading texts by Plato and Aristotle - or at least translations) - because the subject of philosophy is one that is encompassed by the life of a Man, and is learned and developed during the life of one Man.

And therefore the subject of philosophy is an encounter between individual Men (often across the generations).

This explains why there is no agreed objective definition of philosophy - there is not even an agreed canon of valuable philosophers; because there is no valid extra-personal arbitrator - you or I must decide 'what is philosophy' for our-selves, and for our own actual purposes in the context of our own lives. And this definition may, probably will, change through a life - according to actual needs that 'philosophy' may address.

For instance, I have had some use for Plato and Aquinas; but none at all for Hume or Kant - because I have been sure (from secondary sources) that Hume and Kant's work is fundamentally metaphysically wrong, that they work from false - therefore evil - assumptions.

To the extent that studying them thoroughly is harmful - and that harm can be confirmed in those who have studied them and promote them - and why would I want to harm myself?

For me, philosophy has been therapeutic in the way that Wittgenstein claimed it should be - but failed to achieve in his own work. The therapy has come from showing that some of my assumptions were indeed assumptions, and were not 'evidence', were not conclusions. I only arrived at this situation in late 2012, I think - so for most of the time I read and thought-about philosophy (about 40 years) I was wrong, it was wrong, and it did more harm than good.

But in the end, a few specific bits of philosophy (including from people not recognised by academia as 'philosophers') has been greatly valuable - life-saving - living as I do in a culture for which the mainstream philosophy is so massively harmful, so powerfully inculcated, and so deeply embedded.

This post originated in a comment at Bonald's Throne and Altar blog.