Ludwig Wittgenstein—A Cultural Point of View: Philosophy in the Darkness of This Time (review)

In Ludwig Wittgenstein—A Cultural Point of View, William James DeAngelis examines Oswald Spengler's influence on Wittgenstein and Wittgenstein's views on the inexpressibility of religion in language. He connects the two subjects through Spengler's views on cultural decline. DeAngelis faces numerous challenges in his research, not least of which is the relative absence of references to Spengler (and religion) in Wittgenstein's writings. Although Wittgenstein includes Spengler among those whose thinking he seizes upon with enthusiasm for his work of clarification, he never cites him directly, and it would be difficult to find an author whose style is more dramatically opposed to his own. With the exception of a few parenthetical references in Culture and Value, Wittgenstein equates Spengler's views with distortion and a dogmatism that is to be avoided. DeAngelis avoids (rather than addresses) these difficulties by only occasionally concerning himself with "the directly expressed content of Wittgenstein's later philosophy" (1). He views the Investigations as a latent philosophy of culture with a "Spenglerian valence" (6), and asserts that Wittgenstein's cultural purposes are all but impossible to glean from his writings. His own attempts to do so prove problematic, however, and he repeatedly acknowledges that his interpretations are "highly conjectural and may well be wide of the mark" (89). DeAngelis rarely quotes Wittgenstein, instead relying heavily on the writings of Cavell, Malcolm, Winch, and others.

Spengler's influence is presented as the cause (or an affirmation) of Wittgenstein's general pessimism and his contempt for the civilization of his time. This view is based on Wittgenstein's 1930 Sketch for a Foreword and the 1945 preface to the Investigations. However, both passages are much more complex than such an interpretation would suggest. To take but one sentence from the preface, Wittgenstein writes that he makes his ideas public with doubtful feelings for "it is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another—but, of course, it is not likely." DeAngelis chooses "philosophy in the darkness of this time" as the subtitle for his book and connects it with Spengler. However, for Spengler 'this time' refers to the state of Western Europe and America between 1800 and 2000 and involves the inevitable decline of culture into civilization. When Wittgenstein refers to the darkness of 'this time', he is simply referring to the context in which he is writing. It may be a reference to January 1945, or to the mid-twentieth century. It may or may not encompass the last two centuries or include the one in which we now live. There is an inherent vagueness in Wittgenstein's reference that becomes distorted under the weight of DeAngelis's interpretation. And although the above quotation may be read as an expression of pessimism, it is also an expression of hope and humor, for it is uncharacteristic of Wittgenstein to refer to human beings as 'brains', and an attempt to bring light into one brain or another in a time of darkness is both playful and suggestive. While not denying that Wittgenstein is often critical of his times, he is more accurately understood as challenging and rejecting both the romanticism and pessimism that surrounded him.

DeAngelis does not investigate the one connection with Spengler that appears most direct and most promising: that of his method. Spengler's descriptive morphology (taken from Goethe) emphasizes a synoptic presentation of living forms. Wittgenstein describes his own method as that of giving "the morphology of the use of an expression." This is described in an early writing as collating a form of language with its environment, and transforming it in imagination in order to gain a view of the whole in which language has its being. It is a method that is described and demonstrated throughout the later writings...