“Work on Oneself”: Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Psychology by Fergus Kerr, O.P. (review)

510 BOOK REVIEWS ''Work on Oneself': Wittgenstein's Philosophical Psychology. By FERGUS KERR, 0.P. Arlington, Va.: The Institute of Psychological Sciences Press, 2008. Pp. 119. $19.95 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-9773103-1-9. Fergus Kerr's ''Work on Oneself': Wittgenstein's Philosophical Psychology is a peculiar addition to the already unwieldy-perhaps unseemly-number of existing introductions to the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Based upon lectures "commissioned by a Catholic institution for students of clinical psychology," Work on Oneselfis intended to be an "elementary introduction to Wittgenstein's philosophical reflections on psychology" with an "emphasis on Wittgenstein's religious background and the implications, arguably, for his philosophy" (8). Needless to say, most introductions to Wittgenstein are not designed for Catholic students of clinical psychology interested in his religious impulses and later philosophical psychology. Hence, in an obvious way, Kerr's work is justifiable, for it approaches Wittgenstein's work from a novel angle; indeed, a more curious target audience would be hard to imagine. Yet the work as a whole succeeds in more ways than that of filling a narrow niche; in fact, it succeeds almost in spite of its intended purpose. Work on Oneselfis a valuable and commendable introduction to the life and thought ofWittgenstein, but not because it really accomplishes what a reasonable reader would expect an "elementary introduction" to Wittgenstein's philosophical psychology to accomplish. The chapters do not build upon one another in a linear or chronological fashion, nor do they tightly cohere around the subject of "Wittgenstein's Philosophical Psychology," as the subtitle advertises. Instead, the book is more a series of biographical vignettes that, taken together, provide a sketch of Wittgenstein's life and philosophical journey, and the animating spirit behind both. Rather than a continuous and sustained argument, the chapters are, for the most part, collections of one- to three-page snapshots of episodes in Wittgenstein's life-usually his intersection with a cultural or intellectual movement or an influential person or work-and the philosophical insights or transformations to which they gave rise. (As an intellectual biography, the work is more philosophically rich and less damning than David Edmonds' and John Eidinow's Wittgenstein's Poker but more compact and less prone to hero worship than Ray Monk's The Duty of Genius.) By adopting this biographical-philosophical approach, Kerr effectively blurs the lines between biography and philosophy in order to show what Wittgenstein himself said, namely, that "work on philosophy ... is work on oneself." Kerr's treatment of Wittgenstein and Catholicism is a case in point. Though Wittgenstein is not immediately recognized as a philosopher of religion, his extant writings contain numerous remarks on Christianity and Catholicism and reflections on major religious works such as James George Frazer's Golden Bough and William James's Varieties of Religious Experience. According to Maurice Drury, a friend of Wittgenstein's for over twenty years, Wittgenstein once confessed, "I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view. I would like my work to be understood in this BOOK REVIEWS 511 way." Commentators have long had difficulty reconciling such serious reflections on religious issues and the use of religious language with the wider thought of Wittgenstein, the one-time inspiration for logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. Most have either ignored these remarks or written them off as peripheral, a regrettable hang-over from his early exposure to Catholicism or his youthful fascination with Schopenhauer. In Kerr's view, however, a deep religious sensibility in general and a fascination with Catholicism in particular were principal motivators in Wittgenstein 's personal and intellectual life. The biographical-philosophical sketches that collectively constitute the second chapter revolve around the thesis that the later Wittgenstein's holistic and pragmatic tendencies sprang from a "double event," namely, his "repudiating rationalism in Catholic apologetics and respecting the place of ritual and ceremony in human life" (52). By sketching brief episodes and encounters from Wittgenstein's life-from his reading of such figures as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Barth to his death-bed request, made through Elizabeth Anscombe, that he speak with a priest-Kerr progressively makes his case that at...