Wittgenstein Labors at Guy's During WWII

[… continuing a segment that might be called, “Wittgenstein at War, Again.” – sw]

 Wittgenstein thought it intolerable to teach philosophy during World War II when Britain was being blitzed. He wanted to help with the civilian war effort. In September of 1941, he therefore obtained a job at Guy’s Hospital in London, working as a dispensary porter. Monk writes,

 “Wittgenstein’s job as a porter was to deliver medicines from the dispensary to the wards, where, according to John Ryle’s wife, Miriam, he advised the patients not to take them. His boss at the pharmacy was Mr. S F. Izzard. When asked later if he remembered Wittgenstein as a porter, Izzard replied, ‘Yes, very well. He came and worked here and after working here three weeks he came and explained how we should be running the place. You see, he was a man who was used to thinking.’ After a short while, he was switched to the job of pharmacy technician in the manufacturing laboratory, where one of his duties was to prepare Lassar’s ointment for the dermatological department. When Drury visited Wittgenstein at Guy’s, he was told by a member of the staff that no one before had produced Lassar’s ointment of such high quality. “ (433)

 Wittgenstein’s work was physically grueling. He was 52 years old and had said to Rowland Hutt, “When I finish work about 5 … I’m so tired I often can hardly move.” (434).

 Source: Ray Monk, The Duty of Genius, 433-434. 

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John Ryle on Ludwig Wittgenstein

During World War II when the Germans were regularly bombing Britain, Wittgenstein found it intolerable to teach philosophy. He wanted to assist with the civilian war effort. In September of 1941, he was able to arrange a lunch meeting with John Ryle about obtaining work at Guy’s Hospital where he could assist people in need. After meeting Wittgenstein, Ryle wrote a letter to his wife, saying …

“He is one of the world’s most famous philosophers …He wears an open green shirt and has a rather attractive face. I was so interested that after years as a Trinity don, so far from getting tarred with the same brush as the others, he is overcome by the deadness of the place. He said to me ‘I feel I will die slowly if I stay there. I would rather take a chance of dying quickly. And so he wants to work at some humble manual job in a hospital as his war-work and will resign his chair if necessary, but does not want it talked about at all. And he wants the job to be in a blitzed area. The works department are prepared to take him as an odd job man under the older workmen who do all the running repairs all over the hospital. I think he realizes that his mind works so differently to most people’s that it would be stupid to try for any kind of war-work based on intelligence. I have written to him tonight to tell him about this job but am not trying to persuade him unduly.” 

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Wittgenstein's Thoughts in 1937 About God & The Resurrection of Jesus

After describing a period in Wittgenstein’s life where he experienced inner feelings of anxiety, guilt and fear – he was always a complicated person – Ray Monk offers the following. Wittgenstein was staying in Norway in 1937 and had trouble working. Monk goes on to note:

 “When, during the following few days, he was able to work again, he thanked God for a gift he did not deserve. He always felt, he wrote, what a truly devout person never feels – that God was responsible for what he was: ‘It was the opposite of piety. Again and again I want to say: “God, if you do not help me, what can I do?”' And although this attitude accords with what the Bible teaches, it is not that of a truly devout man, for such a one would assume responsibility for himself. ‘You must STRIVE,’ he urged himself; ‘never mind God.’”

Two paragraphs later, Monk continues: 

“On the ship to Bergen Wittgenstein wrote of Christ’s Resurrection and of what inclined even him to believe in it. If Christ did not rise from the dead, he reasoned, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. ‘HE IS DEAD AND DECOMPOSED.’ He had to repeat an underline the thought to appreciate its awfulness. For if that were the case, then Christ was a teacher like any other, ‘and can no longer HELP; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation.’  And if that is all we have, then: ‘We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven.’ If he wanted to be saved, to be redeemed, then wisdom was not enough; he needed faith:

 “And faith is faith in what is needed by my HEART, my SOUL, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can only say: Only LOVE can believe in the Resurrection. Or: it is LOVE that believes the Resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to Resurrection … 

What combats doubt is, as it were, REDEMPTION. Holding fast to THIS must be holding fast to that belief. …”

[Note: allcaps substitued for italics -- sw]

 Source: Ray Monk, The Duty of Genius, at page 382-383. Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.

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Hermine on Her Brother Becoming Wittgenstein

Hermine observes the following changes in her brother ...

"Already at that time, a profound transformation was taking place in Ludwig, the results of which were not to be apparent until after the war, and which finally culminated in his decision not to possess any more wealth. ...

His second decision, to choose a completely unpretentious vocation and perhaps to become a country schoolteacher, was at first incomprehensible even to me. Since we, his brothers and sisters, very often communicated with each other in comparisons, I told him … that imagining him with his philosophically-trained mind as an elementary school teacher it was to me as if someone were to use a precision instrument to open crates. Thereupon Ludwig answered with a comparison which silenced me[,] for he said, "You remind me of someone who is looking through a closed window and cannot explain to himself the strange movements of a passer-by. He doesn’t know what kind of a storm is raging outside and that this person is perhaps only with great effort keeping himself on his feet." It was then that I understood his state of mind."

----- Hermine Wittgenstein

 Sources: Rush Rhees, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections, Blackwell 1981 p. 4-5; Michael Nedo, Guy Moreton and Alec Finlay, “Ludwig Wittgenstein, There Where You are Not,” 2005, at p. 39.

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Joan Bevan's Account of Wittgenstein

 John Bevan was Dr. Edward Bevan's wife. Wittgenstein had taken residence with Dr. Bevan after his cancer had reached a severe stage. Following his death, Mrs. Bevan had the following to say: 

 “My husband Edward met Maurice Drury in the war and they became very friendly, and in the course of their conversations he told Edward about Professor Wittgenstein …  Shortly after his [Wittgenstein’s] return from America in the autumn of 1949 where he had been staying with the Norman Malcolms and had been taken ill – he sent for my husband – and from this encounter our friendship and close contact originated … . It was remarkable that he never discussed or tried to discuss with me, subjects which I did not understand, so that in our relationship I never felt inferior or ignorant. He was completely unconscious of his own appearance, he was very fussy about his personal cleanliness – but it was utterly without vanity. He seemed to know what was going on in the world though he never ever read the papers or listened to the news on the wireless. He was very demanding and exacting although his tastes were very simple. It was UNDERSTOOD that his bath would be ready, his meals on time and that the events of the day would run to a regular pattern."

 -- Joan Bevan [allcaps substituted for italics in original; Paragrpahs condensed into one -sw]

Sources: Michael Nedo, Michele Ranchetti, “Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten, Suhrkamp,” 1983 at p. 475;  and Michael Nedo, Guy Moreton and Alec Finlay, “Ludwig Wittgenstein, There Where You are Not,” 2005, at p. 85.

Regards and thanks,

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