In a sense, our indifference to philosophy is a kind of liberation, he says. It is lightness itself. We do not know the gravity of thought. We feel no philosophical weight. We walk like astronauts on the moon, in great blithe leaps, in huge bounds. Nothing keeps us to the surface of our studies. Nothing holds us down.
Once, it was possible to learn things, and to be shaped by your learning, he says. Once, to be a student meant to be formed by what you learned. To let it enter your soul. But today?
We’re drowning in openness, he says. In our sense of the possible. We’re ready to take anything in — to learn about anything, and therefore about nothing. Everything is available to us, and therefore nothing is available to us. Everything is at our disposal, and therefore nothing is at our disposal. We are infinitely open-minded, which is to say, infinitely closed-minded.
Our sense of our own potential—he sees it in us. Our sense of our youth. Our belief that the world lies open before us. Don’t we understand that it is our very sense of potential that is the problem? That it is our very sense of youth that is the problem? That it is our sense that the world lies open before us that is the problem?
• • •
There was a time when learning awoke unknown desires, he says. Desires for what lay outside you, outside your grasp.
There was a time when students knew how to reach, and that they had to reach.
And now? Before our desires even coalesce, they are answered. Before our desires become desires, they are satisfied. Our desires are met before we even have them.
There’s no yearning, for us. No sense that something lies beyond.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy: that’s what Pascal had inscribed on his posthumous memorial, Wittgenstein says. Those who know nothing of grief can know nothing of joy, either.
Ede, hand in the air. Wittgenstein ignores him.
He knows how we live, he says. He knows how we do not live.
Drinking doubles and trebles at bars in which we cannot hear ourselves speak. Drinking doubles and trebles because we have absolutely nothing to say to one another.
We drink because we do not live, he says. Because we have no idea what it means to live.
He’s heard the thump-thump of our music. He’s heard our drunken laughter.
We’re guzzlers, he says. Devourers. Cambridge is a trough, and we are its pigs.
How disgusting we are! How filthy—morally speaking! Actually speaking.
We’re stupid, he says. Shallow. We’re without soul. Without insight.
Do we know it? he wonders. Do we have any idea of it? Do we sense what we lack? Do we understand that life’s seriousness lies far beyond us? Is that why we drink ourselves into insensibility? Why we deaden ourselves? Is that why we half destroy ourselves, and leave the contents of our stomachs on the courtyard flagstones?
No, we have no sense of what we lack, he says. Life’s seriousness means nothing to us.
Pints of Weissbier in the Free Press.
KIRWIN A: Why does Wittgenstein think we’re such idiots? We got into Cambridge, for fuck’s sake! That’s got to count for something.
MULBERRY: Well—he’s obviously suffered for his thought. Now it’s our turn.
KIRWIN B: But why should we bother to suffer? It’s not as if he’s a great advert for the philosophical life.
ME: Maybe we are a bit too proud. Or stupid. Or whatever else it is he says. Maybe we do need some discipline.
EDE: You, Peters, are a masochist. I don’t mean a sexual masochist. You’re a thought masochist, which is much worse.
MULBERRY: Peters thinks Wittgenstein is our very own genius. I’ve seen the way you look at him, Peters! Like a swooning schoolgirl!
ME: And what if he is a genius?
KIRWIN A: I don’t know … I think it’s all theatre, all smoke and mirrors.
MULBERRY: It probably takes a genius to know a genius. Otherwise, it’s just blind faith.
ME: Then I have faith. We all do — why else do we come to class?
KIRWIN B: To watch a nervous breakdown, that’s why. A slo-mo nervous collapse. We’re voyeurs.
EDE: No — we come to class to try to discover why it is we continue to come to class.
KIRWIN A: Oh, very fucking clever, Ede.
Benwell’s mutiny.
Wittgenstein wants to become a kind of mirror for us, he says. A mirror in which we can see the shortcomings of our own thinking. Of our own temptations of thought. Of our own philosophical temptations.
Benwell, clicking and unclicking his pen. Benwell, tutting. Shuffling his papers.
BENWELL (interrupting): This is all nonsense! None of this means anything!
Wittgenstein looks at him calmly.
BENWELL: I’m tired of all this posh boy SHITE.
DOYLE: Do shut up, Benwell!
BENWELL (to Doyle): Don’t you fucking start!
DOYLE: Start what?
The Kirwins stir menacingly in their seats.
BENWELL (leaving): Fuck the lot of you.
The Maypole, after class.
Benwell’s going to kill us all, Doyle says, he’s sure of it. Ede says he’d quite like to be poor and northern, and full of bitterness. He’d start a band. He’d sing about being poor and northern, and full of bitterness …
Discussion of Benwell. Is it just that Benwell is very, very bad at doing good, or is his evil something real, like Voldemort, or something? Was Benwell always evil? Was he an evil child? An evil five-year-old? At what point did Benwell become evil? When did Benwell go over to the dark side?
Or is it just that Benwell’s poor (Ede’s view)? A victim of the class system (Ede again)? Is it that Benwell’s had none of the advantages of the rest of us, even Peters (Ede)? Is it that Benwell will only come into his own after the revolution (Ede, for a final time)?
In Doyle’s rooms, before the Pembroke College toga party. We’ve each brought a bottle of white spirits, as instructed: vodka, gin, tequila, Bacardi. Doyle mixes them up with pastis and coke. The Black Zombie: Doyle’s favourite tipple.
A performance of the death of Socrates, inspired by David’s painting. Guthrie as Socrates, sitting upright on the bed, one hand gesturing wildly, the other reaching out for the cup that Ede passes him. The rest of us as Socrates’s followers, our eyes full of tears.
Guthrie looks so dignified, we all agree. Guthrie is fully believable, reaching out for the cup of hemlock/Black Zombie the jurists of Athens had condemned him to drink — his sentence for corrupting the young. The real Socrates drained the cup willingly, claiming that there was nothing for the philosopher to fear in death.
GUTHRIE/SOCRATES: Give me the hemlock, jailer! For I am unafraid of death, as all philosophers should be. (Turning to us.) And you lot, stop your weeping! Cease your lamentations! What a display you make of yourselves! Don’t you know dying is something to be done in silence!