Ludwig Wittgenstein - A Cultural Point of View

Philosophy in the Darkness of this Time

William J. DeAngelis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317103028
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In the preface to his Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein expresses pessimism about the culture of his time and doubts as to whether his ideas would be understood in such a time: 'I make them public with doubtful feelings. 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'. In this book William James DeAngelis develops a deeper understanding of Wittgenstein's remark and argues that it is an expression of a significant cultural component in Wittgenstein's later thought which, while latent, is very much intended. DeAngelis focuses on the fascinating connection between Wittgenstein and Oswald Spengler and in particular the acknowledged influence of Spengler's Decline of the West. His book shows in meticulous detail how Spengler's dark conception of an ongoing cultural decline resonated deeply for Wittgenstein and influenced his later work. In so doing, the work takes into account discussions of these matters by major commentators such as Malcolm, Von Wright, Cavell, Winch, and Clack among others. A noteworthy feature of this book is its attempt to link Wittgenstein's cultural concerns with his views on religion and religious language. DeAngelis offers a fresh and original interpretation of the latter.

Chapter 1Spengler's Influence on Wittgenstein: A First Approximation

DOI: 10.4324/9781315593104-2

I. Introduction

In 1931, writing in a personal journal, Wittgenstein enumerated the names of those thinkers whom he deemed to have been his most important intellectual influences. He makes the strong claim that these are thinkers whose seminal ideas he has taken over, further elaborated, and incorporated into his own work. Here are the names he lists in their order of appearance: Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, and Sraffa.¹

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¹ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, ed. G. H. Von Wright in collaboration with Heikki Nymnan (Oxford, 1980), p. 19e.

At the time of the first publication of this list in Culture and Value, those familiar primarily with the most widely read and influential writings on Wittgenstein and his philosophical influences – probably, Norman Malcolm's Memoir (including Von Wright's introduction) and Janik and Toulmin's Wittgenstein's Vienna – would most likely have been surprised by the inclusion of Spengler's name. His is the only one on the list that does not appear in either book. Every other thinker named is mentioned as an influence on Wittgenstein in one or the other work. For each, some of the purported details of that influence are offered. Further, the appearance of Spengler's name is surprising, given the relatively low esteem in which his work is generally held. The other listed individuals, with the exception of Weininger, are well-respected figures.

Oswald Spengler was an extremely unorthodox historian and the author of The Decline of the West – a ponderous, two-volume work that is not well regarded by most professional historians. The work is avowedly opposed to the scientific method in history, makes repeated and vitriolic criticisms of history as it is usually practiced. It is unashamedly bold in claiming a major success for itself. It is often badly written, rambling, and repetitive. The work frequently makes pronouncements with little or no argumentation or documentation. These shortcomings are characteristic of the work. They stand out. Dray has described Spengler's style abusively as “oracular” and he, Toynbee, and Gardiner all question both Spengler's methods and his knowledge of some of the cultures he analyzes.²

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² Patrick Gardiner (ed.), Theories of History (London, 1959), especially pp. 188–9 and 200–201, in which the editor discusses, compares, and criticizes the methodologies of Spengler and Toynbee; and pp. 207–8, in which Toynbee discusses and criticizes Spengler. In addition, Dray's entry on Spengler in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (cited in detail below) offers similar criticisms and a few of his own.

Some of Spengler's central claims appear to be contradictory. His writing is as unlike Wittgenstein's precise, elegant, economical prose as writing can be. Still, for all its faults, Decline offers an engaging viewpoint, makes interesting distinctions, and poses striking observations that appeal to the imagination. It created considerable interest both when it was published in 1918 and again when the English historian, Arnold Toynbee, re-examined some of its themes in the 1940s.

II. Spengler in Overview

i. The Comparative Morphology of Cultures

As a first step toward understanding Spengler's influence on Wittgenstein, I offer a brief outline of Spengler's main theses in Decline. Despite his ponderous writing and the extreme unconventionality of Decline in both form and substance, the main tenets of Spenglerian thought are fairly clear. I will enumerate the three that are most significant and characteristic and will elaborate and comment on each briefly. I seek to introduce some basic elements of Spenglerian thought and to offer needed background for further discussions. As I discuss the nature of Spengler's actual influence on Wittgenstein, I shall focus more upon the details of these three features.

Spengler held that history, properly practiced, is concerned primarily with cultures. It reveals that cultures all develop, mature, decline, and die out in discernibly similar stages. The unfolding of cultures, on his view, constitutes the entire content of history. He is intent to show that all known cultures have developed, flourished, and exhausted themselves in accordance with similar principles, passing through similar sequences of stages. His own efforts focus primarily upon the Classical (which he calls “Apollonian”), the Egyptian, the Arabian, and the modern (which he names “Faustian”) cultures. He attempts to identify patterns of cultural development and document them in some detail. He purports to describe the stages that known cultures, and presumably every culture, have passed through. This is the major task of Decline. He summarizes his purported findings in elaborate, graphic fold-out sheets in appendices to the work. These foldouts outline, in the left-hand column, the supposed prototypical sequences of cultural development and, in parallel, columns to the right outline the developmental sequences of actual cultures. The resulting graphic purports to show how world cultures have actually developed along the lines of the Spenglerian prototype. He sees the shared patterns and stages in the development of different cultures as manifestations of a powerful internal principle of development (he refers to it as “spiritual”) that is embodied in every known culture. Spengler saw this internal principle to be one of historical necessity – every culture must pass through the stages delineated in his stereotype.

This essential task of history Spengler calls the “comparative morphology of cultures”. That expression suggests an analogy that he emphatically endorses – namely, one between the development of a culture and that of an organic entity or process. Spengler writes frequently of “youth”, “maturity”, “decline”, “aging”, and “death” with reference to cultures. This, he insists, is more of an aid than a detriment to real historical understanding. As a seed develops into a plant, or an infant into an adult, in a predictable sequence of stages, cultures too so develop. He also writes of the development of cultures in terms of the succession of the seasons – indeed many of his major conclusions are couched in these terms. Here is Dray's incisive account of Spengler's main morphological contentions about cultures, expressed in these terms:

They have their spring in an early heroic period when life is rural, agricultural, and feudal. In the Apollonian culture this was the Homeric period; in the Faustian it was the high Middle Ages. This is a time of seminal myths, of inspiring epic and saga, and of powerful mystical religion. With summer comes the rise of towns not yet alienated from the countryside, an aristocracy of manners growing up beside an older, lustier leadership, and great individual artists succeeding their anonymous predecessors. In the Apollonian culture this was the period of the early city-states; in the Faustian it was the time of the Renaissance, of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and of the Galilean triumphs of the uncorrupted intellect. Autumn witnesses the full ripening of the culture's spiritual resources and the first hints of possible exhaustion; it is a time of growing cities, spreading commerce, and centralizing monarchies, with religion being challenged by philosophy and tradition undermined by “enlightenment”. In the classical world, this was the age of the Sophists, of Socrates and Plato; in the west it was the eighteenth century, which reached the apogee of creative maturity in the music of Mozart, the poetry of Goethe, and the philosophy of Kant. Transition to winter is characterized by the appearance of the megalopolis, the world city, with its rootless proletariat, plutocracy, esoteric art, and growing skepticism and materialism. It is an age, furthermore, of imperialism, of increasing political tyranny, and of almost constant warfare, as political adventurers skirmish for world empire. In general, culture loses its soul and hardens into mere “civilization”, the highest works of which are feats of administration and the application of science to industry… [Modern] culture is, according to Spengler, well into its autumn period, at a point roughly equivalent to 200 B.C. in the Apollonian culture. An early sign of our advanced cultural age is the career of Napoleon, who is morphologically contemporary with Alexander the Great; our Julius Caesar is yet to come.³

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³ Stephen Dray, s.v. “Spengler, Oswald”, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7, ed. Paul Edwards (New York, 1967), p. 529.

Actually, Spengler is not consistent in his characterizations of twentieth-century European and North American civilization in terms of seasons. The inconsistency is not a serious one, but it should be noted that while he does, as Dray states, sometimes write of late autumn in this regard, he also, as we shall see, characterizes his time as one of early winter.

ii. A Principle of Cultural Insularity

While emphasizing the morphological similarities he saw between vastly different cultures, Spengler also insisted upon their insularity from one another. Spengler held most radical views along these lines: that earlier cultures do not in any important way influence later ones; that the widespread belief that they do is a delusion of prejudice; that standing within one culture, one cannot adequately grasp the perspective of another culture. For example, he insists repeatedly that the Modern Mind has not been influenced by and cannot even understand the Classical Mind.

The notion of the “prime symbol” of a culture is basic in Spengler.⁴ For him a culture is a “spiritual” orientation shared by a people which includes a conception of their world which influences all their activities – their art, religion, philosophy, politics, economics, and even their modes of warfare – and which expresses itself in a distinctive concept of “the space” in which they live. This space-concept functions as the culture's “prime symbol” and is the main key to the understanding of its history. Most significant, he insists that different cultures cannot grasp one another's prime symbols. Nonetheless, Spengler writes at great length about the space-concepts of the classical, the Egyptian, and the modern culture. The details need not concern us here: what is important is that Spengler thinks that each culture is characterized by its unique conception of human life and of all its enterprises. This uniqueness is such that one culture's mode of conception is by its nature alien and impenetrable from “inside” that of another.

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⁴ Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. I, (New York: Modern Library, 1965), see especially pp. 174–80.

This view, while stimulating, nevertheless raises obvious questions. For example, how can Spengler – who presumably thinks from “inside” the unique and limiting perspective of the modern culture – come to understand the perspectives of other cultures given what he says about cultural insularity? His answer is both ad hoc and immodest. In effect, he held that there are rar...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction – Wittgenstein and “The Darkness of this Time”
• 1 Spengler’s Influence on Wittgenstein: A First Approximation
• 2 Wittgenstein’s Spenglerian Assessment of his Time
• 3 Philosophy for a Time of Civilization: Spengler’s Desiderata and the Investigations
• 4 The Investigations as a Philosophy of Culture
• 5 Religious Inexpressibility: Continuity and Change from Wittgenstein’s Early to Late Views
• 6 A Religious Viewpoint in Wittgenstein’s Later Writings? Norman Malcolm’s Four Analogies
• 7 Was Wittgenstein a Spenglerian Atheist?
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index