Wittgenstein

Opera class has finished, and the new class is about Ludwig Wittgenstein. This week, in the second meeting of the class, we watched part of Derek Jarman's film Wittgenstein, script by Terry Eagleton. It's a weird but great film, sort of puts the philosophy in a human context. One scene struck me in particular. I've been looking for the exact quote and when I find it I'll put it here, but the gist was:

Western philosophy has rested on the assumption that each of us is a mind isolated from all other minds by the walls of our skin (the Cartesian assumption, that the only thing you can be sure of is that you think). But Wittgenstein wanted to argue against the possibility of a private language, and to argue that our thoughts are created by us being embedded in a form of life, a community of other people.

He says it much more eloquently than that. The quote is especially moving in the film because he utters it in bed, in the arms of a lover who is gazing at him adoringly. That's a time when yes, you can feel isolated as a pure mind within your own body who can't connect with anyone, but you really want to live out in the space where you two bodies connect, you want that to be the primary metaphysical plane of reality. And also, I am continually struck with how close my PhD thesis view is to Wittgenstein. Perhaps I read him and then never actually thought anything new, just wrote his stuff down. I'm looking forward to getting into the books again to see.

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And also, the class is quite big with lots of people to meet, and I think it will be easy. During the break I had little friendly exchanges with all sorts of people. I think it's because I have a default smile for strangers now that's a "Hi, can I help you?" smile. It's left over from the work at the Art Gallery, but it's handy even when you're not in a position of authority - it makes people smile back and talk to you.