Wittgenstein

If people did not sometimes...

...do silly things,

nothing...

...intelligent would ever get done.

If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Hello.

My name is Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I'm a prodigy.

I'm going to tell you my story.

I was born in 1889 to a filthy-rich family in Vienna.

I would like to introduce them to you.

This is my mother, Leopoldine.

She was crazy about music.

In fact, she was so busy entertaining Brahms and Mahler

that we were left with the 26 tutors and seven grand pianos.

Hermine, my oldest sister, was an amateur painter.

Gretyl married an American and was psychoanalysed by Freud.

Of Helene, we will remain silent.

Three of my brothers died young.

Hans ran away to America to escape dad, and disappeared off a boat in Chesapeake Bay.

Kurt's troops rebelled in the First World War and the shame drove him to suicide.

Rudolf, who was bent, spent most of his time in Berlin.

When he wasn't being theatrical, he hung out at the Scientific Humanitarian Committee.

He topped himself drinking a glass of cyanide in his favourite bar.

That leaves Paul. He was a concert pianist, but lost an arm in the war.

Ravel composed the Concerto for the Left Hand especially for him.

And as for Dad, he was always in the office investing in American bonds.

That's how we escaped inflation and stayed rich -

mega-rich - like the Rockefellers.

In art, it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing.

Even to have expressed false thought boldly and clearly is to have gained a great deal.

Of time.

The horrors of hell can be experienced in a single day.

That's plenty of time.

I was to spend a lifetime disentangling myself from my education.

"Quite the best to be had in Vienna," Mum said.

I shared a history teacher with Adolf Hitler.

What a scream.

If someone is merely ahead of time, it will catch him up one day.

I am in England. Everything around me tells me so.

Tell me how you're searching, and I'll tell you what you're searching for.

Who's that?

Hail, earthling.

Earthling? I'm a philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Who are you?

You could call me Mr Green.

May I ask you a question?

How many toes do philosophers have?

Ten.

Fascinating.

That's how many humans have.

Mr Green, philosophers are humans and know how many toes they have.

Oh dear.

Does that mean Martians can't be philosophers?

- Oh, God. - (Xylophone)

I escaped the family by going to Manchester University.

Manchester, an industrial town in the English north.

I remember my father saying, "Where there's muck, there's brass."

Well, my aim was to be a pioneer in aeronautics.

But my experiments ended in a teenage failure and I gave up.

I abandoned my unsuccessful attempt to design an engine,

and, like the English hero, Dick Whittington,

went south to Cambridge to study philosophy with Bertrand Russell.

Why won't you just admit there's no rhinoceros in this room?

Because, Professor Russell, the world is made up of facts, not things.

Look for yourself.

I tell you for a fact, there is no rhinoceros in this room!

The issue is metaphysical, not empirical.

I thought the next big step in philosophy would be yours.

Now I am not so sure.

Professor Russell.

Professor Russell.

Shh!

"Dear Ottoline,

Herr Schwinckel-Winkel, hard at it on universals and particulars.

He has the pure intellectual passion in the highest degree, and it makes me love him.

He says every morning he begins his work with hope,

and every evening he ends in despair."

"We both have the same feeling that one must understand or die.

He is the young man one hopes for.

His disposition is that of the artist, intuitive and moody.

He affects me, just as I affect you.

I get to know every turn and twist of the ways in which I irritate and depress you

- from watching how..." "...he irritates and depresses me.

And at the same time I love and admire him.

His boiling passion may drive him anywhere. "

God, the English are a queer bunch.

Lady Ottoline Morrell was the queerest.

She was fucking the gardener and Russell.

All the fun was in the country houses.

Everyone else was miserable.

Cambridge was miserable.

There was no oxygen there.

Can you imagine spending your evenings with those pretentious apostles?

I was no fun at parties.

The drunken chit-chat of British intellectuals bored me.

So, in desperation, I fled to Norway and built a small house on a fjord at the end of the world.

I started to write Notes On Logic.

How can I be a logician before I'm a human being?

The most important thing is to settle accounts with myself.

It's much easier here in Norway.

The solitude is bliss.

I can do more work here in a day than I can in a month around people.

Cambridge was absolutely unbearable!

A brothel.

Impossible to concentrate.

Here at last,

I feel... I'm solving things.

I've heard Herr Wittgenstein has gone to Norway.

I told him it would be dark.

He said he hated daylight.

I told him it would be Lonely.

He said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people.

I said he was mad.

He said God preserve him from sanity.

God certainly will.

Its shocking that he's never read Aristotle.

I don't merely have the visual impression of a pillar box.

I know this is a pillar box.

I know this is a hand.

And what is a hand?

This, for example.

It's a certain certainty.

I'm familiar with certainty.

I know this film studio is in Waterloo.

But how do I know that you are Ludwig Wittgenstein?

Ludwig, Ludwig!

I've just heard from Mother that you're going to join up.

Now, look, I understand wanting to do your bit in this terrible war,

but why do you want to die in the trenches?

Why not get a clerical job in Vienna?

Because I want to go to the front.

Why put yourself at risk like this, Ludwig?

You've been exempted, for Christ's sake.

Standing eye to eye with death will give me the chance to be a decent human being.

I'll be doing something.

I'm going as well.

We've got to do our duty.

Where two principles meet which cannot be reconciled with one another,

then each calls the other a fool or a heretic.

I'm hated because I'm a volunteer!

I'm surrounded by people who hate me.

The nearness of death will bring me the light of life.

God, enlighten me.

God, enlighten me!

I am a worm.

Pray God that I become a man.

God be with me.

God be with me!

Amen!

I know this world exists.

But its meaning is problematic.

Am I good or am I evil?

When my conscience upsets my equilibrium, then I am not in agreement with something.

What is it?

Is it the world?

Or is it God?

Wittgenstein has been taken prisoner.

Oh, how fascinating!

"I am a prisoner of war in Monte Cassino under the Italians.

I hope we shall see each other after the war.

Being shot at many times has altered the way I think about philosophy.

So has Tolstoy's Gospel In Brief.

I have written a book called Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

It combines logical symbolism with religious mysticism.

It's better with no shoes, no shoes at all.

Love, Ludwig."

I must send him some more cocoa tablets.

Sounds like he's rather depressed.

Does he know you've been in prison, Bertie?

I doubt it.

Such nice manners always, Ludwig.

Good stock.

What is logical symbolism?

Oh, it's too difficult to explain.

That's the trouble with you, Bertie. You can never answer a straight question.

I was released from prison camp on the 21st of August, 1919.

I wanted to get my Tractatus published, so I went back to Vienna.

Ludwig!

Ludwig, what do you mean you want to teach in a rural school?

It would be like a precision instrument opening crates.

Look, you were decorated in the war.

Bertrand Russell says you're the great philosophical hope.

You can't go and teach in the provinces.

Hermine, you remind me of someone looking out through a closed window

who cannot explain the strange movements of someone outside.

You can't tell what sort of storm is raging,

or that this person might only be managing to stay on his feet with difficulty.

Well, I still think it's a waste of your talents.

If you hadn't been so daft and given all your money to us,

you could publish your book yourself, without having to bow and scrape to publishers.

I don't want to force my philosophy on the world, if a publisher won't publish it.