Imagine it! he says: a whole town built below sea level (more or less). Waiting for the sea to close over it. Waiting to drown, with just the spires of King’s College Chapel poking up above the water.
We walk quietly beside him, wary of his mood.
A don, walking his dog, greets Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein nods back.
The dog is a disgusting creature, Wittgenstein says when the don is out of earshot. Bred for dependency. Bred for slobbering. We think our dogs love us because we have a debased idea of love, he says. We think our dogs are loyal to us because we have a corrupted sense of loyalty.
People object to pit bulls and Rottweilers, but pit bulls and Rottweilers are his favourite dogs, Wittgenstein says. They don’t hide what they are.
People love Labradors, of course. But the Labrador is the most disgusting of dogs, he says, because of its apparent gentleness.
The kindness of the Labrador: disgusting. The pleasantness of the Labrador: disgusting. The even-temperedness of the Labrador: disgusting. The tractability of the Labrador: disgusting. The easygoingness of the Labrador: likewise disgusting. The affability of the Labrador: altogether disgusting. The good-naturedness of the Labrador: filth! Pure filth! The outgoingness of the Labrador: horrific. The sociability of the Labrador: despicable. The kindly eyes of the Labrador: wholly disgusting …
The Cambridge dons’ thoughts are like their dogs, he says. Their thoughts are like thoughts on a leash … Thoughts trained to play catch … Thoughts sniffing the rear ends of other thoughts … Thoughts with a collar round their necks. Thoughts whose mess you have to clean up.
The Cambridge mistake is to believe that thought simply comes when you whistle, he says. But thought must whistle to us! Thought should not be tame! Thought should tear out our throats!
Wittgenstein speaks of dangerous thoughts, of thoughts which bite. He speaks of wild thoughts which snarl and sting. Of thoughts which have to be tamed and broken.
There are thoughts you have to avoid if they appear, he says. Shy thoughts, wary thoughts, thoughts that only cross your mind when all is calm and still, like deer passing through a woodland glade at dawn.
And there are thoughts that have to be flushed out, he says. Driven in herds. Thoughts that need baiting—thoughts that can be caught only by means of decoys, of lures, of hidden traps. Thoughts for which you have to lie in wait.
And there are thoughts you have to run down, he says — thoughts you have to chase through days and nights. Thoughts which run you down. Thoughts which turn you into the quarry, thoughts which charge you, thoughts which beat you from your hiding place.
And there are thoughts which are cleverer than you are, he says. Wiser than you are. Thoughts which are better than you are, loftier and more noble. High thoughts, thoughts that stream above you …
And there are thoughts of the stratosphere, he says. Of the ionosphere! Thoughts that skim along the edge of space, and that you have to bring down to earth. Thoughts of the depths — subterranean thoughts, which sing through fundaments and profundities. Reverberant thoughts, like buried earthquakes. Thoughts no longer of the hard crust, but of the blazing mantle. Thoughts of the earth’s core, deep down where lava turns in lava.
Those are the kinds of thoughts he came to Cambridge to think, Wittgenstein says. Those are the thoughts only the atrocious conditions of Cambridge might impel him to think.
He didn’t come to Cambridge to sit at the feet of Collison-Bell, the modal logician, he says. Nor of Hawley, the modal realist. It wasn’t the epistemological work of Pritchett that drew him here, nor the meta-epistemology of McPherson. He didn’t come to study with Oliphant, the famous metaphysician, nor to pursue the meta-philosophy of ‘Mutt’ McDonald. It was not to attend the lectures of Price-Young on Infallibalism, nor of Safranski on Indefeasibility, nor of Subramanian on Externalism, nor of Han on Internalism. It wasn’t to ally himself with the research group on Quantum Cognition, nor to become part of the Computational Neuroscience Network. He had no intention whatsoever of advancing Cambridgean thought in the areas of malleable intelligence, nor of dynacism.
He came to Cambridge to be close to the thieves, he says. Blessed are those who know at what time of night the thieves will come. They will be awake, gathering their strength and strapping on their belts, before the thieves arrive.
It is night, he says. He is strapping on his belt. Because he came to Cambridge to rout the thieves.
(EDE (whispering): Isn’t Wittgenstein, technically, a don?
ME (whispering): But not spiritually. And that’s the point.)
Little St Mary’s Church, damp and quiet. Bottled-up air. The smell of wet plaster.
It’s really only the fragment of a church, you can see that, Wittgenstein says. It was meant to be part of something larger.
He admires the flintwork of the tower. Cambridgeshire flint, he says, the only stone round here. He admires the windows, and the daggers and mouchettes in the tracery. So similar to Ely Cathedral, he says. So unlike other East Anglian churches …
A long pause. The rest of us stand about awkwardly. Wittgenstein smiles. The problem is, none of us really knows what to do in a church, he says.
We know we have to be quiet, he says. We know we mustn’t disturb the church. Even Benwell knows that he shouldn’t make a racket in the calm. But that’s all that remains of the old reverence for the place where heaven and earth were supposed to meet.
WITTGENSTEIN (inspecting the chantry chapels): Christianity declares us to be wretched: that’s its greatness. Christianity knows us as sinners. (A pause.) I suppose you are all atheists.
Titmuss begins to speak of religion in India. No one listens.
MULBERRY: Do you believe in God?
WITTGENSTEIN: I do not. Not, at least, in the sense you think I might.
MULBERRY: Surely you either believe in God or you don’t.
WITTGENSTEIN: Perhaps it is not a question of belief. Perhaps the concept of God is not the kind of thing in which one can believe or disbelieve.
DOYLE: You mean religion is a cultural thing? That it’s all about belonging to a tradition?
Silence.
WITTGENSTEIN: A despairing man cries, O God, and rolls his eyes up to heaven. It is on that basis we should understand both the words God and heaven. A despairing man cries, I am damned, and falls, weeping, to the ground. It is on that basis we should understand both the words damnation and Hell.
The concept of God is used to express an extremity of wretchedness, suffering, and doubt, he says. Really, religion is only for the wretched. That’s why we, who know nothing of wretchedness, know nothing of religion. And that’s why we, who never feel ourselves to be wretched, know nothing of philosophy, either.