Abstract
One of Cavell’s most striking themes, which he associates with Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (IV. 53), is that there is a close connection between philosophy and madness and that madness lurks just beneath the surface of ordinary life. However, he does not quote the final remark of that section which suggests that just as madness permeates sanity so also death permeates life (Wittgenstein’s “Midst of Death and Madness”, hereafter MDM). The extensive religious-literary history of MDM, including Augustine, Luther, Milton and Rilke (several of which are admired by Wittgenstein) is explored. MDM is viewed in the light of Wittgenstein’s Remark to Drury that he cannot help looking at problems from a religious point of view. The view of death in Wittgenstein’s “later philosophy” is contrasted with his view in the Tractatus. It is shown how Wittgenstein uses MDM to bring the deceptive sublimity of mathematics “down to earth” (where the people and the madness are). Finally, it is shown how these insights suggest that mathematics is, within limits, akin to literature, and, following Cavell, that some great literature can be seen as making what Wittgenstein calls “grammatical” points.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
MDM is repeated with a slightly different translation by Winch in Culture and Value (44). See note 4 below for an explanation of all the acronyms in this chapter.
- 2.
Abbreviations of Cavell’s works are as follows: Must We Mean What We Say? (MMS); The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (TCR); This New Yet Unapproachable America (NUA); Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (ECH); Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow (PDAT); and In Quest of the Ordinary (IQO). All references to Cavell’s works are by page number.
- 3.
Wittgenstein’s works are abbreviated as follows: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP); Notebooks, 1914–16 (NB); Philosophical Investigations (PI); The Blue and Brown Books (BB); Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (RFM); Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics (LFM); “Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics” (LA); “Notes for the Philosophical Lecture” (NPL); Culture and Value (CV); Zettel (Z); and On Certainty (OC). References to TLP are to proposition number, to NB and CV by page number, to PI, Z and OC, unless indicated otherwise, by paragraph number, to RFM by section and paragraph number.
- 4.
The acronyms used in the paper are: MDM = “Midst of Death and Madness”; DML = “Death in the Midst of Life”; SSM = “Sanity Surrounded by Madness”; and WRD = “Wittgenstein’s Remark to Drury”.
- 5.
By Wittgenstein’s early philosophy is here meant TLP and NB. By his later philosophy is here meant all the works referenced in the present paper except his TLP and NB. Although it is difficult to draw the distinction between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” philosophies with any precision, Wittgenstein did distinguish between his early and later ways of looking at things (Kripke 1982, 78, 120, 123).
- 6.
Psalm 23 is usually attributed to King David, who lived between 1040 and 970 BCE (Carr and Conway 2010, 58), long before Plato. It is worth noting that in the present context religious works are cited as works of literature rather than as endorsements of religious doctrine.
- 7.
Luther, Martin. 1524. “Mitten wir im Leben sind”, Project Gutenberg. http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/martin-luther-kirchenlieder-268/14.
- 8.
Wittgenstein picked Rilke as one of the main beneficiaries of his fortune (Monk 1996, 108, 110).
- 9.
The English title and text are this author’s own translation. Snow (see Rilke 1994, 252–53) translates the title as “Closing Piece” and the text as “Death is great/We are his completely with laughing eyes/When we feel ourselves immersed in life he dares weep immersed in us”.
- 10.
For the record, Drury later became a medical doctor and psychiatrist (Malcolm 2001, 112).
- 11.
See also NB (75)!
- 12.
“Wenn wir im Leben vom Tod umgeben sind so auch in der Gesundheit des Verstands vom Wahnsinn.” Although Anscombe’s translation is not wrong per se, recall that in English “sanity” is a legal, not a psychological term, thereby losing Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the health [Gesundheit] of mind referenced in the original German.
- 13.
Spinoza’s and TLP’s views of the world “under the aspect of the eternal” contrast with the more “existential” views of the world from “the midst of” life in Wittgenstein’s “later philosophy”, as reflected in RFM (IV. 53) and in Heidegger (1962, § 53).
- 14.
- 15.
This is not the causal claim that Wittgenstein’s changing views about criteria for the use of words changed his views about the possibility of experiencing of death. It is difficult to know what caused what here, but it may be that his changing views about life and death changed his views about linguistic criteria.
- 16.
Since much of RFM (§ IV) concerns problems pertaining to the infinite, one might think that MDM does not find “madness” in all mathematics, but only in the mathematics of the infinite. However, although the madness” referenced in MDM is most evident in the mathematics of the infinite, there is reason to believe he holds similar views about virtually all mathematics. See the discussion of proofs in finite mathematics at RFM (I. 38–46): “A demon has cast a spell around this position and excluded it from our space” (RFM, I. 45). For this reason, this chapter refers to the madness in mathematics, although it is admitted that there are reasons why Wittgenstein asserts MDM at the close of a section that is primarily concerned with the mathematics of the infinite.
- 17.
Storr (1912, lines 332–33), roughly, replaces Heidegger’s “strange” with “wonder”.
- 18.
The expression “human-all-too-human” is from Nietzsche (2000), who has his own quarrel with other-worldly sublime entities that he sees as falsifying the creativity and dignity of human life.
- 19.
Recall that Wittgenstein’s philosopher treats a philosophical problem as one treats an illness. The comparison between Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and psychoanalysis is relevant here (Heaton 2000). Like the psychoanalytic patient, the patient’s pride may be ruptured in the healing process, but once the healing is completed the patient (mathematician) can achieve a new healthy view of mathematical truth.
- 20.
Origen suggests that Jesus was the bastard child of a Roman soldier (Casey 2010, 152–54). Nietzsche (1968, 240) allu des to this story when he states that all of our “gods” are “motley bastards” created by “poet’s prevarications”. Although most scholars reject Origen’s story for a lack of evidence (Casey 2010, 154), the idea of “virgin birth” as a euphemism for a bastard-birth may be seen in two very different ways. The idea that Jesus is bastard may be seen as a criticism intended to undermine Jesus with the Jews (Casey 2010, 153–54). On the other hand, it can be seen as a celebration of the miraculous fact that that the most noble of beings can arise out the lowest—that “the pure and sun like gaze of the sage” can arise “out of lust”.
- 21.
Despite Plato’s vehement criticism of poetry (Republic, Bk. 10), his poets bear a significant, although admittedly not perfect, resemblance to his philosophers: “If there is a quarrel between poetry and philosophy, it is a feud among kin” (Gonzalez 2011, 108ff).
- 22.
Cantor is often said to have discovered a “paradise” of amazing objects (Tiles 1989). In fact, the word “paradise” is etymologically related to “enclosure” or “room”. See Online Etymological Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=paradise.
- 23.
It may seem a bit puzzling that Wittgenstein uses the word “prophecy” in this context, but he moves freely to the word “prediction” in the same passage. His point is, presumably, to illustrate that that there is more similarity between the inspired (mad) prophet and the cold rational scientific predictor than one had expected.
- 24.
“Märchen” is often translated as “fairy tale” but it can also have the connotation in German of a fable, myth or tall story.
- 25.
By using this terminology (see note 24 above), Wittgenstein surely intends to suggest that our prized mathematical creations bear a certain resemblance to “fairy tales” or fables—with the important proviso, not to be minimized, that these “glistening” mathematical creations do possess a “solid core” lacking in fairy tales proper.
- 26.
In the Introduction to their anthology on “mathematical poetry ”, Robson and Wimp (1979) agree with Plato that poetry and mathematics are inherently antithetical and that it may be more useful to consider the differences rather than emphasize the similarities.
- 27.
See Cavell’s discussion at MMS (155)!
- 28.
In fact, Wittgenstein’s idea that mathematics can, so to speak, arise out of madness, is just a variant on the imagery in Z (608), which suggests that language and thought may, so to speak, arise out of chaos. Compare Cavell’s (MMS, 305) talk of the creation of a world out of madness with the cosmological language of the emergence of language and thought out of chaos in Z, 608 (McDonough 2015, 2017). See also McDonough (2016/2017b)!
- 29.
For a discussion of the concept of madness in the Italian Renaissance, see Brann (2002, 90, 247–48, 312, 329, 363)!
References
Augustine. 1993. Confessions. Translated by F.J. Sheed. Indianapolis: Hackett.
The Book of Common Prayer According to the Episcopal Church in the United States. 1853. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
Brann, Noel. 2002. The Debate over the Origins of Genius in the Italian Renaissance. Leiden: Brill.
Carr, David, and Colleen Conway. 2010. An Introduction to the Bible: Sacred Texts and Imperial Contexts. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Casey, Maurice. 2010. Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of his Life and Teaching. London: A&C Black.
Cassirer, Ernst. 1969. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cavell, Stanley. 1976. Must We Mean What We Say? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1979. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1989. This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures after Wittgenstein. Albuquerque: Living Batch Press.
———. 1990. Emerson: Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism. La Salle: Open Court.
———. 2005. Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Feyerabend, Paul. 1993. Against Method. New York: Verso.
Gonzalez, Francisco. 2011. The Hermeneutics of Madness: Poet and Philosopher in Plato’s Ion and Phaedrus. In Plato and the Poets, ed. Pierre Destrèe and Fritz Gregor Herrmann. Leiden: Brill.
Hatfield, Gary. 2014. Rene Descartes. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/
Heaton, John. 2000. Wittgenstein and Psychoanalysis. Totem Books.
Heidegger, Martin. 1961. Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Doubleday.
———. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Hume, David. 1967. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon.
Husserl, Edmund. 1970. Cartesian Meditations. Translated by Dorian Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
James, William. 1981. Pragmatism. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Kripke, Saul. 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Luther, Martin. 1884. Mitten Wir in Leben sind. In The Hymns of Martin Luther, ed. Lord Woosley Bacon. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Malcolm, Norman. 1977. Memory and Mind. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
———. 1997. Wittgenstein: From a Religious Point of View? New York: Routledge.
———. 2001. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McDonough, Richard. 2015. Wittgenstein’s Augustinian Cosmology in Zettel 608. Philosophy and Literature 39 (1): 87–106.
———. 2017a. A Gestalt Model of Zettel 608. Idealistic Studies 68 (2): 163–182. Online First (Dec. 1). https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=idstudies&id=idstudies_2017_0999_11_28_63.
———. 2016/2017b. A Music Model of Zettel 608: Haydn and Beethoven. The Journal of Music and Meaning 17: 21–40.
Monk, Ray. 1990. The Duty of Genius. New York: Penguin.
———. 1996. Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (1972–1921). New York and London: The Free Press.
———. 2001. Bertrand Russell: 1921–1970, The Ghost of Madness. New York: The Free Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1966. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books.
———. 1968. Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Portable Nietzsche. Edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking, 112–439.
———. 2000. Human, All Too Human I. Translated by Gary Handwerk. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.
Plato. 1968. Republic. Translated by Alan Bloom. New York and London: Basic Books.
———. 1969a. Phaedo. Translated by Hugh Tredennick. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Hamilton and Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 40–98.
———. 1969b. Phaedrus. Translated by R. Hackforth. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Hamilton and Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 475–525.
———. 1969c. Sophist. Translated by F.M. Cornford. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Hamilton and Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 845–919.
———. 1969d. Laws. Translated by A.E. Taylor. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Hamilton and Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1225–1516.
———. 1997. Symposium. Translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff. Plato: Complete Works. Edited by John Cooper. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 457–505.
Randall, John Herman. 1970. Plato: Dramatist of the Life of Reason. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. 1994. Closing Piece. The Book of Images. Translated by Edward Snow. North Point Press, 252–253.
Robson, Ernest, and Jet Wimp. 1979. Against Infinity. Parker Ford, PA: Primary Press.
Spinoza, Benedict. 1991. Tractatus-Logico-Politicus. Translated by Samuel Shirley. Leiden: Brill.
———. 2015. Ethics. Translated by R.H.M. Elwes. CreateSpace Independent Publishing.
Storr, F. 2014. Antigone in The Three Theban Plays. CreateSpace Independent Publishing.
Taylor, A.E. 1952. Socrates. New York: Doubleday and Company.
Tiles, Mary. 1989. The Philosophy of Set Theory: An Historical Introduction to Cantor’s Paradise. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical Investigations. 2nd ed. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 1961. Tractatus-logico-philosophicus. Translated by David Pears. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
———. 1965. The Blue and Brown Books. New York: Harper.
———. 1966. Notebooks, 1914–16. G.E.M. Translated by Anscombe. New York: Harper and Row.
———. 1969. On Certainty. Translated by Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 1970. Zettel. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
———. 1972. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 1980. Culture and Value. Translated by Peter Winch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1989. Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1993. Notes for the Philosophical Lecture. In Philosophical Occasions. Indianapolis: Hackett.
———. 2007. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McDonough, R. (2018). Wittgenstein “in the Midst of” Life, Death, Sanity, Madness—and Mathematics. In: Hagberg, G. (eds) Stanley Cavell on Aesthetic Understanding. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97466-8_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97466-8_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97465-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97466-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)