Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents, 1911–1951 (review)

This volume includes nearly everything contained in Cambridge Letters (Blackwell, 1995), supplemented by Wittgenstein’s exchanges with Sraffa (not available in 1995), by correspondence with many of his students, and by various documents pertaining to his status in the University and to the Moral Sciences meetings. Throughout, there are notes by McGuinness that provide details about persons, places, and events mentioned in the texts. Altogether, the volume offers rich rewards for both students of Wittgenstein and those interested in the interplay of the times.

Wittgenstein was Austrian to the core, as is evident in his admiration for such distinctly Viennese cultural icons as Nestroy, Grillparzer, Labor, Weininger, and Kraus—none of whom was familiar in the circles within which he moved in Cambridge. In his introduction, however, McGuinness makes clear that Cambridge, not Vienna, was the place where Wittgenstein could work. There were no roots in Cambridge, compared to those in Vienna, but growth, it seems, had to take place away from the roots. During his first stay in Cambridge (1912–14) Wittgenstein established connections with the giants of the time: Russell, Moore, and Keynes, all of whom had been active members of the Apostles, and who therefore put him in touch with the Bloomsbury-flavored younger elite of the University. Although none of these relationships was smooth, they all served in 1929 to ease Wittgenstein’s re-entry into Cambridge.

Once back at Cambridge, and back at work in philosophy, Wittgenstein established his own circle, composed of younger scholars who attended his lectures. The only contact from the early period with whom he remained close through the 1930s and ’40s was Moore, although neither Russell nor Keynes disappeared entirely. Moore attended Wittgenstein’s lectures in 1930–33, and the two met regularly whenever Wittgenstein was in Cambridge. Among his peers, the big addition was Piero Sraffa, the Italian economist who was, as McGuinness puts it, first a protegé and then a successor of Keynes. It is difficult to reconstruct the content of the conversations between these two powerful intellects, but the letters and notes included here make it plain that the conversations were intense and had continuing themes. The Sraffa documents have been available elsewhere, but the chronological order of the documents in this volume means that we can now see them in the wider context of Wittgenstein’s ongoing activity.

Wittgenstein and Sraffa were both equals and opposites—equal in genius, in honesty, in forthrightness, in stubbornness, and in commitment to dialogue, but opposite in opinions and convictions. Time and again, the letters and notes show evidence of tough, wrenching discussions, at times suspended because of exhaustion and weariness. Wittgenstein lists Sraffa last (chronologically, we presume) of ten people who influenced his thought. The letters and notes in this volume confirm a powerful influence, but offer scant clues as to the direction of the influence in Wittgenstein’s later thought.

One of the younger scholars was the physicist W. H. Watson, who became Distinguished Professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. His On Understanding Physics is, McGuinness reports, a reliable guide of Wittgenstein’s thinking on these matters. In their correspondence we find many instances of what they both regarded as nonsense penned by the great scientists of the day (Jeans, Eddington, and Einstein). The nonsense appears to have presented grand pronouncements in everyday language, concerning mundane rather than distinctively philosophical matters. By providing new insight into how Wittgenstein relished nonsensical items, the correspondence with Watson helps us appreciate Wittgenstein’s nose for nonsense as part of his philosophical genius.

For Wittgenstein, happiness depended on work. This is evident in his Notebooks 1914–1916 and again in these documents. For example, on June 17, 1941, he writes to Moore, “About six weeks ago I suddenly . . . began to be able to write again. Quite possibly this will last only for a very short time; but it feels good while it lasts and has made a great deal of difference to me...