Wittgenstein (1993) Movie Script
If people did not sometimes...
...do silly things,
nothing...
...intelligent would ever get done.
If people did not sometimes do silly things,
nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Hello.
My name is Ludwig Wittgenstein.
I'm a prodigy.
I'm going to tell you my story.
I was born in 1889
to a filthy-rich family in Vienna.
I would like to introduce them to you.
(Fanfare)
- This is my mother, Leopoldine.
She was crazy about music.
In fact, she was so busy
entertaining Brahms and Mahler
that we were left with the 26 tutors
and seven grand pianos.
Hermine, my oldest sister,
was an amateur painter.
Gretyl married an American
and was psychoanalysed by Freud.
Of Helene, we will remain silent.
Three of my brothers died young.
Hans ran away to America to escape dad,
and disappeared off a boat in Chesapeake Bay.
Kurt's troops rebelled in the First World War
and the shame drove him to suicide.
Rudolf, who was bent,
spent most of his time in Berlin.
When he wasn't being theatrical, he hung out
at the Scientific Humanitarian Committee.
He topped himself drinking a glass of cyanide
in his favourite bar.
That leaves Paul. He was a concert pianist,
but lost an arm in the war.
Ravel composed the
Concerto for the Left Hand especially for him.
And as for Dad, he was always in the office
investing in American bonds.
That's how we escaped inflation
and stayed rich -
mega-rich - like the Rockefellers.
(Gentle music)
In art, it is hard to say anything
as good as saying nothing.
Even to have expressed false thought boldly
and clearly is to have gained a great deal.
Of time.
The horrors of hell
can be experienced in a single day.
That's plenty of time.
(Murmurs)
(Babble of muttering)
I was to spend a lifetime
disentangling myself from my education.
"Quite the best to be had in Vienna," Mum said.
I shared a history teacher with Adolf Hitler.
What a scream.
(Babble of voices intensifies)
(Cacophony of voices)
(Faint muttering)
(Gunshot reverberates)
(Mimics gunshots)
(Faint ticking)
If someone is merely ahead of time,
it will catch him up one day.
I am in England.
Everything around me tells me so.
MALE VOICE: Tell me how you're searching,
and I'll tell you what you're searching for.
Who's that?
Hail, earthling.
Earthling?
I'm a philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Who are you?
You could call me Mr Green.
May I ask you a question?
How many toes do philosophers have?
Ten.
Fascinating.
That's how many humans have.
Mr Green, philosophers are humans
and know how many toes they have.
Oh dear.
Does that mean
Martians can't be philosophers?
- Oh, God.
- (Xylophone)
LUDWIG AS AN ADULT: I escaped the family
by going to Manchester University.
Manchester,
an industrial town in the English north.
(Laughs) I remember my father saying,
"Where there's muck, there's brass."
Well, my aim was to be
a pioneer in aeronautics.
But my experiments
ended in a teenage failure and I gave up.
I abandoned my unsuccessful attempt
to design an engine,
and, like the English hero, Dick Whittington,
went south to Cambridge
to study philosophy with Bertrand Russell.
Why won't you just admit
there's no rhinoceros in this room?
Because, Professor Russell,
the world is made up of facts, not things.
Look for yourself.
I tell you for a fact,
there is no rhinoceros in this room!
The issue is metaphysical, not empirical.
I thought the next big step in philosophy
would be yours.
Now I am not so sure.
(Grunting)
Professor Russell.
Professor Russell.
(Crickets chirping)
Shh!
"Dear Ottoline,
Herr Schwinckel-Winkel,
hard at it on universals and particulars.
He has the pure intellectual passion in the
highest degree, and it makes me love him.
He says every morning
he begins his work with hope,
and every evening he ends in despair."
"We both have the same feeling
that one must understand or die.
He is the young man one hopes for.
His disposition is that of the artist,
intuitive and moody.
He affects me, just as I affect you.
I get to know every turn and twist of the ways
in which I irritate and depress you
- from watching how..."
RUSSELL: "...he irritates and depresses me.
And at the same time I love and admire him.
His boiling passion may drive him anywhere. "
GILBERT & SULLIVAN:
I Am Alone And Unobserved
In short, my medievalism's affectation
Born of a morbid love of admiration
God, the English are a queer bunch.
Lady Ottoline Morrell was the queerest.
She was fucking the gardener and Russell.
All the fun was in the country houses.
Everyone else was miserable.
Cambridge was miserable.
There was no oxygen there.
(Breathes hoarsely)
Can you imagine spending your evenings
with those pretentious apostles?
I was no fun at parties.
The drunken chit-chat of British intellectuals
bored me.
So, in desperation, I fled to Norway and built
a small house on a fjord at the end of the world.
I started to write Notes On Logic.
How can I be a logician
before I'm a human being?
The most important thing
is to settle accounts with myself.
It's much easier here in Norway.
The solitude is bliss.
I can do more work here in a day
than I can in a month around people.
Cambridge was absolutely unbearable!
A brothel.
Impossible to concentrate.
Here at last,
I feel... I'm solving things.
I've heard Herr Wittgenstein
has gone to Norway.
I told him it would be dark.
He said he hated daylight.
I told him it would be Lonely.
He said he prostituted his mind
talking to intelligent people.
I said he was mad.
He said God preserve him from sanity.
God certainly will.
Its shocking that he's never read Aristotle.
(Ticking)
LUDWIG: I don't merely have
the visual impression of a pillar box.
I know this is a pillar box.
I know this is a hand.
And what is a hand?
This, for example.
It's a certain certainty.
I'm familiar with certainty.
I know this film studio is in Waterloo.
But how do I know
that you are Ludwig Wittgenstein?
(Gentle piano music)
Ludwig, Ludwig!
I've just heard from Mother
that you're going to join up.
Now, look, I understand wanting to do your bit
in this terrible war,
but why do you want to die in the trenches?
Why not get a clerical job in Vienna?
Because I want to go to the front.
Why put yourself at risk like this, Ludwig?
You've been exempted, for Christ's sake.
Standing eye to eye with death will give me
the chance to be a decent human being.
I'll be doing something.
(Stab of piano chords)
I'm going as well.
We've got to do our duty.
(Dramatic piano music)
(Gunfire and artillery fire)
Where two principles meet
which cannot be reconciled with one another,
then each calls the other a fool or a heretic.
(Gunfire and artillery fire)
I'm hated because I'm a volunteer!
I'm surrounded by people who hate me.
The nearness of death
will bring me the light of life.
God, enlighten me.
God, enlighten me!
I am a worm.
Pray God that I become a man.
God be with me.
God be with me!
Amen!
I know this world exists.
But its meaning is problematic.
Am I good or am I evil?
When my conscience upsets my equilibrium,
then I am not in agreement with something.
What is it?
Is it the world?
Or is it God?
Wittgenstein has been taken prisoner.
Oh, how fascinating!
"I am a prisoner of war
in Monte Cassino under the Italians.
I hope we shall see each other after the war.
Being shot at many times
has altered the way I think about philosophy.
So has Tolstoy's Gospel In Brief.
I have written a book called
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
It combines logical symbolism
with religious mysticism.
It's better with no shoes, no shoes at all.
Love, Ludwig."
I must send him some more cocoa tablets.
Sounds like he's rather depressed.
Does he know you've been in prison, Bertie?
I doubt it.
Such nice manners always, Ludwig.
Good stock.
What is logical symbolism?
Oh, it's too difficult to explain.
That's the trouble with you, Bertie.
You can never answer a straight question.
(Church bells ring)
I was released from prison camp
on the 21st of August, 1919.
I wanted to get my Tractatus published,
so I went back to Vienna.
(Dramatic piano music)
Ludwig!
Ludwig, what do you mean
you want to teach in a rural school?
It would be like a precision instrument
opening crates.
Look, you were decorated in the war.
Bertrand Russell
says you're the great philosophical hope.
You can't go and teach in the provinces.
Hermine, you remind me of someone
looking out through a closed window
who cannot explain the strange movements
of someone outside.
You can't tell what sort of storm is raging,
or that this person might only be managing
to stay on his feet with difficulty.
Well, I still think it's a waste of your talents.
If you hadn't been so daft
and given all your money to us,
you could publish your book yourself,
without having to bow and scrape to publishers.
I don't want to force my philosophy
on the world, if a publisher won't publish it.
Can't you understand that?
Well, I would rather have a happy person
for a brother than an unhappy saint.
I am going to teach.
CHILDREN:? Three blind mice
"Those truth possibilities of its truth-argument
which verify... and prositions...
I shall call its truth grounds..."
Yes, good.
Proposition. So what is this here?
What do you call this here?
Logic.
What's this here?
What do you call this here?
Teaching you
is a... thoroughly... unrewarding experience.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Do you understand what I'm saying?
It's a waste of time.
It's a waste of my time,
your time, everybody's time.
Do you understand...
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Oh, my God!
Oh, my dear, dear God!
Teaching proved to be a sham.
I had to "do a runner"...
...and lie about my brutality towards the children.
They just weren't any good at logic or maths,
and they drove me crazy.
I kidded myself that my background and class
weren't important,
but I stood out like a sore thumb
at these provincial schools.
The parents hated me and called me strange.
I felt guilty for years.
Somehow I had failed.
Morally.
This is a red pillar box.
How do you know that?
I've done my homework.
Green is green.
Children learn by believing adults.
Doubt comes after belief.
I know what I believe.
Where I come from there are no adults,
and so no doubts.
If I post this letter to New York, does that
strengthen my conviction that the earth exists?
The earth does exist.
And so do Martians.
(Xylophone)
(Ticking)
Well, you end the book with the line,
"Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must remain silent."
Why didn't you?
I don't understand a word, Ludwig.
It's gobbledygook.
How much were you paid for this?
I was paid nothing for the rights,
and will receive no royalties.
Typical. You won't be able
to buy a pair of socks soon.
But I have published a book.
I heard that the book was only published
because Bertrand Russell
wrote an introduction.
LUDWIG: I have Russell's introduction.
He can't understand a word either.
HERMINE: Who can?
Hermine, we must improve ourselves.
That's all we can do to better the world.
Is it true you're designing Gretyl
a brand-new house?
That's right. The whole thing.
Right down to the window latches
and the door handles.
Well, I hope it's more comprehensible
than your book.
(Phone rings)
Maynard?
- Maynard?
- Waistcoat!
Ah.
His book is obscure and too short.
But good.
My introduction got it published.
Yes, but I still think
we should get him back to Cambridge.
Maynard, we're going to be late.
You're going to have to sort out his grants.
In a moment of amnesia, he gave away
all his money to his brothers and sisters.
An absolute fortune, I'm told.
If I can sort out the economies of the world,
I ought to be able to sort out a stipend
for Wittgenstein.
- That is, if Cambridge will still have him.
- Oh, I'm sure they'll have him.
His Tractatus is all the rage,
whatever we may think of it.
Well, leave it to me, I know how to get him back.
Oh, er, Maynard, hold on a moment, I just...
Johnny, do you feel like a trip to Vienna?
Vienna?
(Choir chants)
Dr Wittgenstein.
Dr Wittgenstein.
I've come to take you home.
Home?
- Where's that?
- Cambridge.
Cambridge.
God help me.
I have letters from Mr Keynes and Mr Russell.
I should introduce myself.
Johnny.
Mr Russell asked me to tell you
that you're the greatest philosopher of our time.
Well...
Tell me, Johnny, are you a philosopher?
Yes.
Are you happy?
You know, you really should give it up.
Get out while you still can.
(Graceful piano music)
Lydia!
Ah, Maynard.
God has arrived. He was on the 5:15 train.
Are you sure it's a good idea bringing him here,
Maynard?
I've heard he's difficult and peculiar.
A philosopher is a citizen of no community.
Does he make fit with Bloomsbury friends?
He seems so heavy-handed and Germanic.
Yes, he is.
Why are you all so interesting in him?
Because he's a genius, Lydoushka.
Yes, but what is he doing?
He's trying to define for us
the limits of language.
And what it is to have communication,
one with another.
Don't be so pompous.
Dearest darling, I am going to be pompous.
The country needs
more than one decent philosopher.
Bertie needs some competition.
Our Viennese import might just do the trick.
Maynardoushka, your head
is infinitely more flexible than my legs.
What are you doing?
Everyone's waiting for you.
Go away, please!
They're torturing me!
For God's sake, just open your mouth
and say the first thing
that comes into your head.
Don't be so ridiculous.
Listen, just get through this seminar
and we can go to the cinema.
A dog... cannot lie.
Neither can he be sincere.
A dog may be expecting his master to come.
Why can't he be expecting him
to come next Wednesday?
Is it because he doesn't have language?
If a lion could speak, we would not
be able to understand what he said.
Why do I say such a thing?
If we could understand him, I shouldn't think
we'd have too much trouble with a lion.
We could get an interpreter.
Do you mean for me or for the lion?
Yes, yes, we...we could get an interpreter.
But what possible use would that be?
To imagine a language
is to imagine a form of life.
It's what we do and who we are
that gives meaning to our words.
I can't understand the lion's language,
because I don't know what his world is like.
How can I know the world a lion inhabits?
Do I fail to understand him
because I can't peer into his mind?
(Whispering)
What's going on behind my words,
when I say, "This is a very pleasant pineapple"?
No, please, take your time.
STUDENT: The thought, Professor.
I see.
And what is the thought that lies behind
the words, "This is a very pleasant pineapple"?
This is a very pleasant pineapple.
Listen to me.
We imagine the meaning of what we say as
something queer, mysterious, hidden from view.
But nothing is hidden!
Everything is open to view!
It's just...
it's just philosophers who muddy the waters.
STUDENT: Professor Wittgenstein.
You can't know this pain.
Only I can.
Are you sure you know it?
You don't doubt you had a pain just then?
How could I?
If we can't speak of doubt here,
we can't speak of knowledge either.
I don't follow.
It makes no sense
to speak of knowing something
in a context where
we could not possibly doubt it.
Therefore to say, "I know I am in pain,"
is entirely senseless.
When you want to know the meaning of a word,
don't look inside yourself,
look at the uses of the word in our way of life.
Look at how we behave.
Are you saying
there are no philosophical problems?
There are...
linguistic,
mathematical, ethical,
logistic and... religious problems,
but there are
no genuine philosophical problems!
You're trivialising philosophy.
Philosophy is just
a by-product of misunderstanding language!
Why don't you realise that?
Oh, dear. He can't bear disagreement, can he?
What are you doing?
Making notes on your class before I forget it.
Are you mad? You'll ruin the plot.
Shh.
There is no plot.
There might be.
Put it away.
Put it away this instant.
What did you say about Fortnum & Mason?
Don't be ridiculous.
LUDWIG AS AN ADULT: There was no
competition between the cinema and seminar.
I loved films.
Especially westerns and musicals.
Carmen Miranda and Betty Hutton
were my favourite actresses.
I always sat in the front row.
Film felt like a shower bath,
washing away the lecture.
I hated the newsreels.
Far too patriotic.
I felt the makers
must have been master pupils of Goebbels.
As for playing the national anthem at the end,
I'd sneak out.
(Graceful piano music)
Come on, Maynard!
Speed it up.
Can't go any faster, it's making me giddy.
Should I go any faster, Ludwig?
No, no, you keep going as you are. Come on
Maynard, keep it up, keep it up, keep it up!
You're slowing the whole thing down.
I'm done for.
You've ruined the whole thing!
We were just getting into rhythm.
Go away and play with someone else!
All right.
You can be the sun this time. It's easier.
I'll be the earth,
and Lydia can be the moon.
We take rest.
Take tea.
Come along, Maynard.
Oh, dear.
I wonder where I went wrong?
Oh, Bertie, do listen to this.
It's Julian Bell's satirical poem of Ludwig.
"For he talks nonsense,
numerous statements makes
Forever his own vow of silence breaks
Ethics, aesthetics, talks of day and night
and calls things good or bad and wrong or right
Who on any issue ever saw
Ludwig refrain from laying down the law?
In every company he shouts us down
and stops our sentence stuttering his own
Unceasing argues, harsh, irate and loud,
sure that he's right and of his rightness proud
Such faults are common, shared by all in part,
but Wittgenstein pontificates on art"
WittersGitters, WittersGitters, WittersGitters!
Fairy, fairy, fairy!
Idiot!
What does this mean?
It's a gesture of contempt.
A cyclist did this to me
as I was crossing the road.
I decided then and there to kill myself.
Are you coming to the Palladium with us
this evening?
What's the logical structure of this gesture?
It doesn't have one!
That means I've spent most of my life
groping down a blind alley.
Isn't it rather an over-reaction to kill yourself,
because somebody gives you a V-sign?
Philosophy hunts for the essence of meaning.
There's no such thing.
There's no such thing!
Just the way we do things in everyday life
and things like that.
The college porter knows that.
Is that what you're planning to do
for the rest of your life?
L-I shall start by committing suicide.
Champagne before you go?
Um, do you know...
l-I'd love a cup of tea.
How like a philosopher to hate philosophy.
He thinks ordinary working people
have the answers.
He wants me to give up philosophy.
Perhaps I should.
Philosophy just states what everyone admits.
How does philosophy take the measure of this?
It's not supposed to.
It'd be like complaining
that you can't play a tune on a carrot.
Precisely.
Do you think philosophy is useless?
Oh, no.
It serves Ludwig as a therapy.
Are you going to take his advice?
I was destined for the pit.
My parents gave up everything to get me here.
I'd be quite happy to go back,
but it would break their hearts.
Well, what about Aristotle?
What about Aristotle?
L-I've never read Aristotle.
What can he tell us, anyway?
The answers are in Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky and Saint Matthew.
How marvellous!
I didn't know you were a Christian, Ludwig!
I'm not.
It's just that I look at everything
from a religious point of view.
Why is there anything at all
rather than just nothing?
Well, how the bloody blue blazes
should I know?
I'm the woman. You are the philosopher.
The most important part of my philosophy
hasn't been written.
I can't write it. It can never be written.
Oh, bunkum! A full English breakfast
and a spot of application.
It doubt it'll be understood in the future.
People, culture, the air,
everything will be different in the future.
We're mutating.
You know, your obsession with perfection
is quite, quite ludicrous.
I want to be perfect, don't you?
Christ, no.
- Then I don't see how we can be friends.
- Neither do I.
I used to believe
that language gave us a picture of the world.
But it can't give us a picture of how it does that.
That would be like trying to see yourself
seeing something.
How language does that is beyond expression.
That is the mystery.
That was all wrong.
Language isn't a picture at all.
What is it, then?
It's...
...a tool.
An instrument.
There isn't just one picture of the world,
there are lots of different language games,
different forms of life,
different ways of doing things with words.
They don't all hang together!
What do you mean?
All I mean is the limits of my language
are the limits of my world.
We keep running up
against the walls of our cage.
I'm terribly sorry.
You have a worthless teacher today.
I...
I'm all cleaned out.
Please forgive me.
That was quite masterly.
- It was frightful.
- I don't know.
Made me feel like a vegetable.
How could it possibly?
It doesn't feel like anything to be a vegetable.
STUDENT: I just can't see it, Professor.
It somehow just seems natural to me to say,
"I know I'm in pain."
Oh... natural.
Tell me,
why does it seem more natural
for people to believe that the sun goes round
the earth, rather than the other way round?
Well, obviously, because it looks that way.
I see.
Then how would it look
if the earth went round the sun?
Erm...
well, I suppose...
Yes, I see what you mean.
LUDWIG AS A BOY: Seminar, flick.
(Gunfire and Native Americans whooping)
Seminar.
(Cavalry trumpet)
Seminar.
Flick.
Seminar.
Flick.
LUDWIG AS AN ADULT: On and on it went.
Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge.
No wonder everyone dreamed of Moscow.
Keynes and Russell had both been there.
Bertie, always the opportunist,
wrote a shilling shocker called
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism.
He condemned it out of hand.
But, as everyone knows,
the best of the Cambridge lot became spies.
My dream was to go to the Soviet Union
and work as a manual labourer.
I've fixed you up a job
with a local engineering firm.
Why?
I thought you'd be pleased.
You'd be working with your hands.
You should do something useful.
But Ludwig,
my training's academic.
That's the challenge.
I'm going to Russia.
I shall try to find us both manual jobs there.
Why do you want to go to Russia?
Oh, by the way, you'll have to lend me a tie.
Professor Wittgenstein, on behalf of the Institute
for Foreign Relations, I can offer you two things.
The chair in philosophy at Kazan University
or a teaching post in philosophy
at Moscow University.
Er, comrade, please.
I don't want to teach.
I want to work as a manual labourer,
either in a factory or on a collective farm.
But, Professor, eto nyevozmozhno.
O chem vy govoritye?
Nyeuzheli vy nye ponimayetye?
Nu, kakoy iz vas kolkhoznik? Eto absurd.
Chto?
I'm terribly sorry, Professor Wittgenstein,
but this is absolutely out of the question.
The one thing that is not in short supply
in the Soviet Union is unskilled labour.
Da.
Da, da, Professor.
We must teach the frozen circumstances
to sing by playing them their own melody.
Professor Wittgenstein,
I do recommend you to read more Hegel.
Eto shutka.
I couldn't possibly read Hegel.
I'd go stark raving mad.
Tell me, have you read Trotsky on art?
That's much more interesting.
Nyet, Professor, ya nye chitala Trotskogo.
Trotskiy - eto opasno.
Professor, ya nye ponimayu vas.
Vy priyezhayetye v Moskvu, vy khotitye rabotat'
v kolkhozye, vy khotitye, chtoby ya chitala
Trotskogo. No Trotskiy - eto opasno.
Trotsky - eto Sibir'.
Vy ponimayetye? Trotsky - eto Sibir'.
(Bell)
- Sleduyushchiy.
Next one.
How was Russia?
Well, at least Lenin's state
has ensured that there's no unemployment.
It is an ordered society.
Are you enjoying yourself?
Yes, I am.
You were right.
- Did you find yourself a job in Russia?
- Sadly, no.
It looks like I'm stuck with Cambridge
and philosophy.
Ludwig, give it up.
What the hell are you playing at, Ludwig?
I've just been talking to Johnny.
What do you mean?
I mean all this poppycock
about engineering and him getting a job.
What do you think his parents will think?
I haven't the foggiest.
Johnny's parents are working people.
His father's a miner.
They sacrificed everything they have
to get him to Cambridge.
What's Johnny's parents got to do with it?
Listen, Wittgenstein,
Johnny's parents are workers.
That's what you admire,
when it's confined to the pages of Tolstoy.
I've never met Johnny's parents.
I strongly advise you not to.
You're foisting your own self-hatred
onto their son.
You've been reading Sigmund Freud.
What of it?
It's dangerous stuff!
Believe me!
It takes one Viennese to know another.
Freud's nothing to do with Johnny
sweating it out in some god-awful factory.
You can't do this, Wittgenstein.
You can't use Johnny
as fodder for your own fantasies.
What I do is none of your business.
It's my business to stop you from...
oh, what's your word,
"infecting" too many young men.
You have a terrible power over them,
can't you see that?
Half of Cambridge goes around
imitating your mannerisms.
You know I've never encouraged disciples.
I'm talking about you, not your ideas.
You lord it over others
and you don't even know it.
All aristocrats idealise the common folk,
as long as they keep stoking the boilers.
I should know, I was brought up like that, too.
If you're talking about my upbringing,
that was a long time ago!
In another country!
How can I possibly speak to a man
who believes I corrupt others?
I'm simply quoting your own words.
Russell,
I would like you to know
that our friendship is now over.
I had a fearful row with Russell yesterday.
He said I was an evil influence.
What is worrying you, Ludwig?
Is it your logic or your sins?
Both.
My sins mostly.
Sins, sinners, sinning.
What nonsense you do talk.
Well, you mustn't expect
any sympathy from me. I'm not a virtuous man.
I never imagined you were.
Do you know, Maynard, every hour, every day,
I keep my feet with the greatest difficulty,
and the slightest gust of dishonesty
would be enough to bowl me over forever.
That's why people think I'm so strange.
I don't know what to say to you.
You're suffering from
a terminal case of moral integrity.
If you'd just allow yourself to be a little
more sinful, you'd stand a chance of salvation.
Salvation is the only thing that concerns me.
And I know we're not here to have a good time.
Spoken like a true Protestant.
Ludwig, my dear, there's nothing in the world
like the warmth of a sated body.
For me, it's as if I'm being burnt
by a freezing wind.
Pull yourself together.
Philosophy is a sickness of the mind.
I mustn't infect too many young men.
How unique and irreplaceable Johnny is.
And yet, how little I realise this
when I am with him.
That's always been a problem.
But living in a world where such a love is illegal,
and trying to live open and honest
is a complete contradiction.
I have...known...Johnny three times.
And each time I began with feeling
that there was nothing wrong.
But after,
I felt shamed.
JOHNNY: What are you thinking?
Oh, just some...
...idea.
What idea?
Well, for many years at the centre of philosophy
was a picture of the lonely human soul
brooding over its private experiences.
Yeah, everyone knows that.
This soul is a prisoner of his own body,
and he's locked out from contact with others
by the walls of their bodies.
I wanted to get rid of this picture.
There is no private meaning.
We are what we are... only because...
...we share a common language
and common forms of life.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Do you understand what I'm saying?
(Like a toff) Yes.
Yes, I'd like that very much. Yes, Wednesday.
Oh, does that suit you?
It suits me fine, yes.
Yes. I thought so, yes.
Yes, he was. Really?
Oh, Bertie? Yes, I know, yes, yes.
For many years, yes.
(Normal voice) Christ!
Professor, you once said the Tractatus
had solved all the problems of philosophy.
Yes.
So I thought at the time.
What I meant was that I tried to show
the sort of things that philosophy could say,
and these aren't really important.
What's much more important
is all the things it can't articulate.
Doesn't cut the mustard, philosophy?
- You think.
- That's right.
So I thought at the time.
In fact, I still think so, but for different reasons.
Now, talking about your more recent work,
the Philosophical Investigations and so on.
That's right. In this later work I abandoned
the idea that language is a sort of picture.
That's just a misleading metaphor.
I mean, you might say that the word "handbag"
is a picture of a handbag.
But what about words like "hello",
"perhaps", "oh, hell",
what do they give us a picture of?
So how would you now define the relationship
between language and the world?
Oh, in lots of different ways.
My mistake had been to think that
there was only one way of talking at stake here.
I came to see that there are
lots of different things we do with language.
Different language games, as I call them.
And the meaning of the word is just the way
it's used in a particular language game.
And what do you now believe
the task of philosophy to be?
Philosophical puzzles arise because we tend
to mix up one language game with another.
For example, people puzzle over
the nature of something they call the "soul".
But this may just be because they're thinking
of the soul along the lines of a physical object.
They're confusing
one way of talking with another.
The job of philosophy
is to sort out these language games?
Exactly.
They're all perfectly in order as they are.
Philosophy in no sense can question them.
Philosophy leaves everything exactly as it is.
Professor Wittgenstein,
you've been associated with the argument
that there can't be a private language.
Could you explain this a little?
What I mean is this,
we learn to use words,
because we belong to a culture.
A form of life.
A practical way of doing things.
In the end, we speak as we do,
because of what we do.
And all this is a properly public affair.
Philosophers in the tradition of Descartes
start from the lonely self,
brooding over its private sensations.
I want to overturn this centuries-old model.
I want to start from our culture,
our shared practical life together,
and look at what we think and feel,
and say it in these public terms.
Professor, thank you very much.
I'm thinking of going away.
Not again, Ludwig.
You've spent your entire life running away.
I'm serious, Maynard.
Where to this time?
Norway? Vienna?
Swansea?
Not the Soviet Union again?
What's wrong with the Soviet Union?
The place is one enormous labour camp.
There's nothing wrong with labour.
There is if they shoot you for not doing it.
I want to give up teaching philosophy
and concentrate on my book.
Why not do it in Cambridge, and be paid?
I'm going to Ireland to live by the sea.
In Ireland they shoot you if you work.
Oh, Ludwig.
I know,
I'm a complete bloody disaster.
We love you.
(Waves lap gently)
Dr Wittgenstein.
Oh, you're here. Good.
At last.
You couldn't have chosen a more remote place.
Well, how's the work on your book?
Creeping along.
That means you've penned a masterpiece.
What's the news from the doctor?
- It's not good, I'm afraid.
- I hope it's not anything serious.
Last week I saw a specialist in Dublin.
I have cancer of the prostate.
Oh, I'm sorry.
It responds well to hormone treatment
at early stages.
Is there anything I can do?
Don't think I'm afraid of dying.
It's death that gives life its meaning and shape.
You can take me back to Cambridge.
I don't want to die here.
Any time you like.
You know,
I'd quite like to have composed a philosophical
work which consisted entirely of jokes.
Why didn't you?
Sadly, I didn't have a sense of humour.
Let me tell you a little story.
There was once a young man who dreamed
of reducing the world to pure logic.
Because he was a very clever young man,
he actually managed to do it.
When he'd finished his work,
he stood back and admired it.
It was beautiful.
A world purged
of imperfection and indeterminacy.
Countless acres of gleaming ice
stretching to the horizon.
So the clever young man looked around the
world he'd created and decided to explore it.
He took one step forward
and fell flat on his back.
You see, he'd forgotten about friction.
The ice was smooth and level and stainless.
But you couldn't walk there.
So the clever young man sat down
and wept bitter tears.
But as he grew into a wise old man,
he came to understand that
roughness and ambiguity aren't imperfections,
they're what make the world turn.
He wanted to run and dance.
And the words
and things scattered upon the ground
were all battered
and tarnished and ambiguous.
The wise old man
saw that that was the way things were.
But something in him
was still homesick for the ice,
where everything was radiant and absolute
and relentless.
Though he had come to like
the idea of the rough ground,
he couldn't bring himself to live there.
So now he was marooned
between earth and ice, at home in neither.
And this was the cause of all his grief.
MOZART: Rondo in A Minor, K511
Hail Chromodynamics, Lord of Quantum.
This is Quark, Charm and Strangeness
reporting.
Concerning the philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein deceased.
The solution to the riddle of life
in space and time
lies outside space and time.
But as you know and I know,
there are no riddles.
If a question can be put at all,
it can also be answered.
CSAR FRANCK:
Sonata for violin and piano in A Major
...do silly things,
nothing...
...intelligent would ever get done.
If people did not sometimes do silly things,
nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Hello.
My name is Ludwig Wittgenstein.
I'm a prodigy.
I'm going to tell you my story.
I was born in 1889
to a filthy-rich family in Vienna.
I would like to introduce them to you.
(Fanfare)
- This is my mother, Leopoldine.
She was crazy about music.
In fact, she was so busy
entertaining Brahms and Mahler
that we were left with the 26 tutors
and seven grand pianos.
Hermine, my oldest sister,
was an amateur painter.
Gretyl married an American
and was psychoanalysed by Freud.
Of Helene, we will remain silent.
Three of my brothers died young.
Hans ran away to America to escape dad,
and disappeared off a boat in Chesapeake Bay.
Kurt's troops rebelled in the First World War
and the shame drove him to suicide.
Rudolf, who was bent,
spent most of his time in Berlin.
When he wasn't being theatrical, he hung out
at the Scientific Humanitarian Committee.
He topped himself drinking a glass of cyanide
in his favourite bar.
That leaves Paul. He was a concert pianist,
but lost an arm in the war.
Ravel composed the
Concerto for the Left Hand especially for him.
And as for Dad, he was always in the office
investing in American bonds.
That's how we escaped inflation
and stayed rich -
mega-rich - like the Rockefellers.
(Gentle music)
In art, it is hard to say anything
as good as saying nothing.
Even to have expressed false thought boldly
and clearly is to have gained a great deal.
Of time.
The horrors of hell
can be experienced in a single day.
That's plenty of time.
(Murmurs)
(Babble of muttering)
I was to spend a lifetime
disentangling myself from my education.
"Quite the best to be had in Vienna," Mum said.
I shared a history teacher with Adolf Hitler.
What a scream.
(Babble of voices intensifies)
(Cacophony of voices)
(Faint muttering)
(Gunshot reverberates)
(Mimics gunshots)
(Faint ticking)
If someone is merely ahead of time,
it will catch him up one day.
I am in England.
Everything around me tells me so.
MALE VOICE: Tell me how you're searching,
and I'll tell you what you're searching for.
Who's that?
Hail, earthling.
Earthling?
I'm a philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Who are you?
You could call me Mr Green.
May I ask you a question?
How many toes do philosophers have?
Ten.
Fascinating.
That's how many humans have.
Mr Green, philosophers are humans
and know how many toes they have.
Oh dear.
Does that mean
Martians can't be philosophers?
- Oh, God.
- (Xylophone)
LUDWIG AS AN ADULT: I escaped the family
by going to Manchester University.
Manchester,
an industrial town in the English north.
(Laughs) I remember my father saying,
"Where there's muck, there's brass."
Well, my aim was to be
a pioneer in aeronautics.
But my experiments
ended in a teenage failure and I gave up.
I abandoned my unsuccessful attempt
to design an engine,
and, like the English hero, Dick Whittington,
went south to Cambridge
to study philosophy with Bertrand Russell.
Why won't you just admit
there's no rhinoceros in this room?
Because, Professor Russell,
the world is made up of facts, not things.
Look for yourself.
I tell you for a fact,
there is no rhinoceros in this room!
The issue is metaphysical, not empirical.
I thought the next big step in philosophy
would be yours.
Now I am not so sure.
(Grunting)
Professor Russell.
Professor Russell.
(Crickets chirping)
Shh!
"Dear Ottoline,
Herr Schwinckel-Winkel,
hard at it on universals and particulars.
He has the pure intellectual passion in the
highest degree, and it makes me love him.
He says every morning
he begins his work with hope,
and every evening he ends in despair."
"We both have the same feeling
that one must understand or die.
He is the young man one hopes for.
His disposition is that of the artist,
intuitive and moody.
He affects me, just as I affect you.
I get to know every turn and twist of the ways
in which I irritate and depress you
- from watching how..."
RUSSELL: "...he irritates and depresses me.
And at the same time I love and admire him.
His boiling passion may drive him anywhere. "
GILBERT & SULLIVAN:
I Am Alone And Unobserved
In short, my medievalism's affectation
Born of a morbid love of admiration
God, the English are a queer bunch.
Lady Ottoline Morrell was the queerest.
She was fucking the gardener and Russell.
All the fun was in the country houses.
Everyone else was miserable.
Cambridge was miserable.
There was no oxygen there.
(Breathes hoarsely)
Can you imagine spending your evenings
with those pretentious apostles?
I was no fun at parties.
The drunken chit-chat of British intellectuals
bored me.
So, in desperation, I fled to Norway and built
a small house on a fjord at the end of the world.
I started to write Notes On Logic.
How can I be a logician
before I'm a human being?
The most important thing
is to settle accounts with myself.
It's much easier here in Norway.
The solitude is bliss.
I can do more work here in a day
than I can in a month around people.
Cambridge was absolutely unbearable!
A brothel.
Impossible to concentrate.
Here at last,
I feel... I'm solving things.
I've heard Herr Wittgenstein
has gone to Norway.
I told him it would be dark.
He said he hated daylight.
I told him it would be Lonely.
He said he prostituted his mind
talking to intelligent people.
I said he was mad.
He said God preserve him from sanity.
God certainly will.
Its shocking that he's never read Aristotle.
(Ticking)
LUDWIG: I don't merely have
the visual impression of a pillar box.
I know this is a pillar box.
I know this is a hand.
And what is a hand?
This, for example.
It's a certain certainty.
I'm familiar with certainty.
I know this film studio is in Waterloo.
But how do I know
that you are Ludwig Wittgenstein?
(Gentle piano music)
Ludwig, Ludwig!
I've just heard from Mother
that you're going to join up.
Now, look, I understand wanting to do your bit
in this terrible war,
but why do you want to die in the trenches?
Why not get a clerical job in Vienna?
Because I want to go to the front.
Why put yourself at risk like this, Ludwig?
You've been exempted, for Christ's sake.
Standing eye to eye with death will give me
the chance to be a decent human being.
I'll be doing something.
(Stab of piano chords)
I'm going as well.
We've got to do our duty.
(Dramatic piano music)
(Gunfire and artillery fire)
Where two principles meet
which cannot be reconciled with one another,
then each calls the other a fool or a heretic.
(Gunfire and artillery fire)
I'm hated because I'm a volunteer!
I'm surrounded by people who hate me.
The nearness of death
will bring me the light of life.
God, enlighten me.
God, enlighten me!
I am a worm.
Pray God that I become a man.
God be with me.
God be with me!
Amen!
I know this world exists.
But its meaning is problematic.
Am I good or am I evil?
When my conscience upsets my equilibrium,
then I am not in agreement with something.
What is it?
Is it the world?
Or is it God?
Wittgenstein has been taken prisoner.
Oh, how fascinating!
"I am a prisoner of war
in Monte Cassino under the Italians.
I hope we shall see each other after the war.
Being shot at many times
has altered the way I think about philosophy.
So has Tolstoy's Gospel In Brief.
I have written a book called
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
It combines logical symbolism
with religious mysticism.
It's better with no shoes, no shoes at all.
Love, Ludwig."
I must send him some more cocoa tablets.
Sounds like he's rather depressed.
Does he know you've been in prison, Bertie?
I doubt it.
Such nice manners always, Ludwig.
Good stock.
What is logical symbolism?
Oh, it's too difficult to explain.
That's the trouble with you, Bertie.
You can never answer a straight question.
(Church bells ring)
I was released from prison camp
on the 21st of August, 1919.
I wanted to get my Tractatus published,
so I went back to Vienna.
(Dramatic piano music)
Ludwig!
Ludwig, what do you mean
you want to teach in a rural school?
It would be like a precision instrument
opening crates.
Look, you were decorated in the war.
Bertrand Russell
says you're the great philosophical hope.
You can't go and teach in the provinces.
Hermine, you remind me of someone
looking out through a closed window
who cannot explain the strange movements
of someone outside.
You can't tell what sort of storm is raging,
or that this person might only be managing
to stay on his feet with difficulty.
Well, I still think it's a waste of your talents.
If you hadn't been so daft
and given all your money to us,
you could publish your book yourself,
without having to bow and scrape to publishers.
I don't want to force my philosophy
on the world, if a publisher won't publish it.
Can't you understand that?
Well, I would rather have a happy person
for a brother than an unhappy saint.
I am going to teach.
CHILDREN:? Three blind mice
"Those truth possibilities of its truth-argument
which verify... and prositions...
I shall call its truth grounds..."
Yes, good.
Proposition. So what is this here?
What do you call this here?
Logic.
What's this here?
What do you call this here?
Teaching you
is a... thoroughly... unrewarding experience.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Do you understand what I'm saying?
It's a waste of time.
It's a waste of my time,
your time, everybody's time.
Do you understand...
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Oh, my God!
Oh, my dear, dear God!
Teaching proved to be a sham.
I had to "do a runner"...
...and lie about my brutality towards the children.
They just weren't any good at logic or maths,
and they drove me crazy.
I kidded myself that my background and class
weren't important,
but I stood out like a sore thumb
at these provincial schools.
The parents hated me and called me strange.
I felt guilty for years.
Somehow I had failed.
Morally.
This is a red pillar box.
How do you know that?
I've done my homework.
Green is green.
Children learn by believing adults.
Doubt comes after belief.
I know what I believe.
Where I come from there are no adults,
and so no doubts.
If I post this letter to New York, does that
strengthen my conviction that the earth exists?
The earth does exist.
And so do Martians.
(Xylophone)
(Ticking)
Well, you end the book with the line,
"Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must remain silent."
Why didn't you?
I don't understand a word, Ludwig.
It's gobbledygook.
How much were you paid for this?
I was paid nothing for the rights,
and will receive no royalties.
Typical. You won't be able
to buy a pair of socks soon.
But I have published a book.
I heard that the book was only published
because Bertrand Russell
wrote an introduction.
LUDWIG: I have Russell's introduction.
He can't understand a word either.
HERMINE: Who can?
Hermine, we must improve ourselves.
That's all we can do to better the world.
Is it true you're designing Gretyl
a brand-new house?
That's right. The whole thing.
Right down to the window latches
and the door handles.
Well, I hope it's more comprehensible
than your book.
(Phone rings)
Maynard?
- Maynard?
- Waistcoat!
Ah.
His book is obscure and too short.
But good.
My introduction got it published.
Yes, but I still think
we should get him back to Cambridge.
Maynard, we're going to be late.
You're going to have to sort out his grants.
In a moment of amnesia, he gave away
all his money to his brothers and sisters.
An absolute fortune, I'm told.
If I can sort out the economies of the world,
I ought to be able to sort out a stipend
for Wittgenstein.
- That is, if Cambridge will still have him.
- Oh, I'm sure they'll have him.
His Tractatus is all the rage,
whatever we may think of it.
Well, leave it to me, I know how to get him back.
Oh, er, Maynard, hold on a moment, I just...
Johnny, do you feel like a trip to Vienna?
Vienna?
(Choir chants)
Dr Wittgenstein.
Dr Wittgenstein.
I've come to take you home.
Home?
- Where's that?
- Cambridge.
Cambridge.
God help me.
I have letters from Mr Keynes and Mr Russell.
I should introduce myself.
Johnny.
Mr Russell asked me to tell you
that you're the greatest philosopher of our time.
Well...
Tell me, Johnny, are you a philosopher?
Yes.
Are you happy?
You know, you really should give it up.
Get out while you still can.
(Graceful piano music)
Lydia!
Ah, Maynard.
God has arrived. He was on the 5:15 train.
Are you sure it's a good idea bringing him here,
Maynard?
I've heard he's difficult and peculiar.
A philosopher is a citizen of no community.
Does he make fit with Bloomsbury friends?
He seems so heavy-handed and Germanic.
Yes, he is.
Why are you all so interesting in him?
Because he's a genius, Lydoushka.
Yes, but what is he doing?
He's trying to define for us
the limits of language.
And what it is to have communication,
one with another.
Don't be so pompous.
Dearest darling, I am going to be pompous.
The country needs
more than one decent philosopher.
Bertie needs some competition.
Our Viennese import might just do the trick.
Maynardoushka, your head
is infinitely more flexible than my legs.
What are you doing?
Everyone's waiting for you.
Go away, please!
They're torturing me!
For God's sake, just open your mouth
and say the first thing
that comes into your head.
Don't be so ridiculous.
Listen, just get through this seminar
and we can go to the cinema.
A dog... cannot lie.
Neither can he be sincere.
A dog may be expecting his master to come.
Why can't he be expecting him
to come next Wednesday?
Is it because he doesn't have language?
If a lion could speak, we would not
be able to understand what he said.
Why do I say such a thing?
If we could understand him, I shouldn't think
we'd have too much trouble with a lion.
We could get an interpreter.
Do you mean for me or for the lion?
Yes, yes, we...we could get an interpreter.
But what possible use would that be?
To imagine a language
is to imagine a form of life.
It's what we do and who we are
that gives meaning to our words.
I can't understand the lion's language,
because I don't know what his world is like.
How can I know the world a lion inhabits?
Do I fail to understand him
because I can't peer into his mind?
(Whispering)
What's going on behind my words,
when I say, "This is a very pleasant pineapple"?
No, please, take your time.
STUDENT: The thought, Professor.
I see.
And what is the thought that lies behind
the words, "This is a very pleasant pineapple"?
This is a very pleasant pineapple.
Listen to me.
We imagine the meaning of what we say as
something queer, mysterious, hidden from view.
But nothing is hidden!
Everything is open to view!
It's just...
it's just philosophers who muddy the waters.
STUDENT: Professor Wittgenstein.
You can't know this pain.
Only I can.
Are you sure you know it?
You don't doubt you had a pain just then?
How could I?
If we can't speak of doubt here,
we can't speak of knowledge either.
I don't follow.
It makes no sense
to speak of knowing something
in a context where
we could not possibly doubt it.
Therefore to say, "I know I am in pain,"
is entirely senseless.
When you want to know the meaning of a word,
don't look inside yourself,
look at the uses of the word in our way of life.
Look at how we behave.
Are you saying
there are no philosophical problems?
There are...
linguistic,
mathematical, ethical,
logistic and... religious problems,
but there are
no genuine philosophical problems!
You're trivialising philosophy.
Philosophy is just
a by-product of misunderstanding language!
Why don't you realise that?
Oh, dear. He can't bear disagreement, can he?
What are you doing?
Making notes on your class before I forget it.
Are you mad? You'll ruin the plot.
Shh.
There is no plot.
There might be.
Put it away.
Put it away this instant.
What did you say about Fortnum & Mason?
Don't be ridiculous.
LUDWIG AS AN ADULT: There was no
competition between the cinema and seminar.
I loved films.
Especially westerns and musicals.
Carmen Miranda and Betty Hutton
were my favourite actresses.
I always sat in the front row.
Film felt like a shower bath,
washing away the lecture.
I hated the newsreels.
Far too patriotic.
I felt the makers
must have been master pupils of Goebbels.
As for playing the national anthem at the end,
I'd sneak out.
(Graceful piano music)
Come on, Maynard!
Speed it up.
Can't go any faster, it's making me giddy.
Should I go any faster, Ludwig?
No, no, you keep going as you are. Come on
Maynard, keep it up, keep it up, keep it up!
You're slowing the whole thing down.
I'm done for.
You've ruined the whole thing!
We were just getting into rhythm.
Go away and play with someone else!
All right.
You can be the sun this time. It's easier.
I'll be the earth,
and Lydia can be the moon.
We take rest.
Take tea.
Come along, Maynard.
Oh, dear.
I wonder where I went wrong?
Oh, Bertie, do listen to this.
It's Julian Bell's satirical poem of Ludwig.
"For he talks nonsense,
numerous statements makes
Forever his own vow of silence breaks
Ethics, aesthetics, talks of day and night
and calls things good or bad and wrong or right
Who on any issue ever saw
Ludwig refrain from laying down the law?
In every company he shouts us down
and stops our sentence stuttering his own
Unceasing argues, harsh, irate and loud,
sure that he's right and of his rightness proud
Such faults are common, shared by all in part,
but Wittgenstein pontificates on art"
WittersGitters, WittersGitters, WittersGitters!
Fairy, fairy, fairy!
Idiot!
What does this mean?
It's a gesture of contempt.
A cyclist did this to me
as I was crossing the road.
I decided then and there to kill myself.
Are you coming to the Palladium with us
this evening?
What's the logical structure of this gesture?
It doesn't have one!
That means I've spent most of my life
groping down a blind alley.
Isn't it rather an over-reaction to kill yourself,
because somebody gives you a V-sign?
Philosophy hunts for the essence of meaning.
There's no such thing.
There's no such thing!
Just the way we do things in everyday life
and things like that.
The college porter knows that.
Is that what you're planning to do
for the rest of your life?
L-I shall start by committing suicide.
Champagne before you go?
Um, do you know...
l-I'd love a cup of tea.
How like a philosopher to hate philosophy.
He thinks ordinary working people
have the answers.
He wants me to give up philosophy.
Perhaps I should.
Philosophy just states what everyone admits.
How does philosophy take the measure of this?
It's not supposed to.
It'd be like complaining
that you can't play a tune on a carrot.
Precisely.
Do you think philosophy is useless?
Oh, no.
It serves Ludwig as a therapy.
Are you going to take his advice?
I was destined for the pit.
My parents gave up everything to get me here.
I'd be quite happy to go back,
but it would break their hearts.
Well, what about Aristotle?
What about Aristotle?
L-I've never read Aristotle.
What can he tell us, anyway?
The answers are in Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky and Saint Matthew.
How marvellous!
I didn't know you were a Christian, Ludwig!
I'm not.
It's just that I look at everything
from a religious point of view.
Why is there anything at all
rather than just nothing?
Well, how the bloody blue blazes
should I know?
I'm the woman. You are the philosopher.
The most important part of my philosophy
hasn't been written.
I can't write it. It can never be written.
Oh, bunkum! A full English breakfast
and a spot of application.
It doubt it'll be understood in the future.
People, culture, the air,
everything will be different in the future.
We're mutating.
You know, your obsession with perfection
is quite, quite ludicrous.
I want to be perfect, don't you?
Christ, no.
- Then I don't see how we can be friends.
- Neither do I.
I used to believe
that language gave us a picture of the world.
But it can't give us a picture of how it does that.
That would be like trying to see yourself
seeing something.
How language does that is beyond expression.
That is the mystery.
That was all wrong.
Language isn't a picture at all.
What is it, then?
It's...
...a tool.
An instrument.
There isn't just one picture of the world,
there are lots of different language games,
different forms of life,
different ways of doing things with words.
They don't all hang together!
What do you mean?
All I mean is the limits of my language
are the limits of my world.
We keep running up
against the walls of our cage.
I'm terribly sorry.
You have a worthless teacher today.
I...
I'm all cleaned out.
Please forgive me.
That was quite masterly.
- It was frightful.
- I don't know.
Made me feel like a vegetable.
How could it possibly?
It doesn't feel like anything to be a vegetable.
STUDENT: I just can't see it, Professor.
It somehow just seems natural to me to say,
"I know I'm in pain."
Oh... natural.
Tell me,
why does it seem more natural
for people to believe that the sun goes round
the earth, rather than the other way round?
Well, obviously, because it looks that way.
I see.
Then how would it look
if the earth went round the sun?
Erm...
well, I suppose...
Yes, I see what you mean.
LUDWIG AS A BOY: Seminar, flick.
(Gunfire and Native Americans whooping)
Seminar.
(Cavalry trumpet)
Seminar.
Flick.
Seminar.
Flick.
LUDWIG AS AN ADULT: On and on it went.
Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge.
No wonder everyone dreamed of Moscow.
Keynes and Russell had both been there.
Bertie, always the opportunist,
wrote a shilling shocker called
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism.
He condemned it out of hand.
But, as everyone knows,
the best of the Cambridge lot became spies.
My dream was to go to the Soviet Union
and work as a manual labourer.
I've fixed you up a job
with a local engineering firm.
Why?
I thought you'd be pleased.
You'd be working with your hands.
You should do something useful.
But Ludwig,
my training's academic.
That's the challenge.
I'm going to Russia.
I shall try to find us both manual jobs there.
Why do you want to go to Russia?
Oh, by the way, you'll have to lend me a tie.
Professor Wittgenstein, on behalf of the Institute
for Foreign Relations, I can offer you two things.
The chair in philosophy at Kazan University
or a teaching post in philosophy
at Moscow University.
Er, comrade, please.
I don't want to teach.
I want to work as a manual labourer,
either in a factory or on a collective farm.
But, Professor, eto nyevozmozhno.
O chem vy govoritye?
Nyeuzheli vy nye ponimayetye?
Nu, kakoy iz vas kolkhoznik? Eto absurd.
Chto?
I'm terribly sorry, Professor Wittgenstein,
but this is absolutely out of the question.
The one thing that is not in short supply
in the Soviet Union is unskilled labour.
Da.
Da, da, Professor.
We must teach the frozen circumstances
to sing by playing them their own melody.
Professor Wittgenstein,
I do recommend you to read more Hegel.
Eto shutka.
I couldn't possibly read Hegel.
I'd go stark raving mad.
Tell me, have you read Trotsky on art?
That's much more interesting.
Nyet, Professor, ya nye chitala Trotskogo.
Trotskiy - eto opasno.
Professor, ya nye ponimayu vas.
Vy priyezhayetye v Moskvu, vy khotitye rabotat'
v kolkhozye, vy khotitye, chtoby ya chitala
Trotskogo. No Trotskiy - eto opasno.
Trotsky - eto Sibir'.
Vy ponimayetye? Trotsky - eto Sibir'.
(Bell)
- Sleduyushchiy.
Next one.
How was Russia?
Well, at least Lenin's state
has ensured that there's no unemployment.
It is an ordered society.
Are you enjoying yourself?
Yes, I am.
You were right.
- Did you find yourself a job in Russia?
- Sadly, no.
It looks like I'm stuck with Cambridge
and philosophy.
Ludwig, give it up.
What the hell are you playing at, Ludwig?
I've just been talking to Johnny.
What do you mean?
I mean all this poppycock
about engineering and him getting a job.
What do you think his parents will think?
I haven't the foggiest.
Johnny's parents are working people.
His father's a miner.
They sacrificed everything they have
to get him to Cambridge.
What's Johnny's parents got to do with it?
Listen, Wittgenstein,
Johnny's parents are workers.
That's what you admire,
when it's confined to the pages of Tolstoy.
I've never met Johnny's parents.
I strongly advise you not to.
You're foisting your own self-hatred
onto their son.
You've been reading Sigmund Freud.
What of it?
It's dangerous stuff!
Believe me!
It takes one Viennese to know another.
Freud's nothing to do with Johnny
sweating it out in some god-awful factory.
You can't do this, Wittgenstein.
You can't use Johnny
as fodder for your own fantasies.
What I do is none of your business.
It's my business to stop you from...
oh, what's your word,
"infecting" too many young men.
You have a terrible power over them,
can't you see that?
Half of Cambridge goes around
imitating your mannerisms.
You know I've never encouraged disciples.
I'm talking about you, not your ideas.
You lord it over others
and you don't even know it.
All aristocrats idealise the common folk,
as long as they keep stoking the boilers.
I should know, I was brought up like that, too.
If you're talking about my upbringing,
that was a long time ago!
In another country!
How can I possibly speak to a man
who believes I corrupt others?
I'm simply quoting your own words.
Russell,
I would like you to know
that our friendship is now over.
I had a fearful row with Russell yesterday.
He said I was an evil influence.
What is worrying you, Ludwig?
Is it your logic or your sins?
Both.
My sins mostly.
Sins, sinners, sinning.
What nonsense you do talk.
Well, you mustn't expect
any sympathy from me. I'm not a virtuous man.
I never imagined you were.
Do you know, Maynard, every hour, every day,
I keep my feet with the greatest difficulty,
and the slightest gust of dishonesty
would be enough to bowl me over forever.
That's why people think I'm so strange.
I don't know what to say to you.
You're suffering from
a terminal case of moral integrity.
If you'd just allow yourself to be a little
more sinful, you'd stand a chance of salvation.
Salvation is the only thing that concerns me.
And I know we're not here to have a good time.
Spoken like a true Protestant.
Ludwig, my dear, there's nothing in the world
like the warmth of a sated body.
For me, it's as if I'm being burnt
by a freezing wind.
Pull yourself together.
Philosophy is a sickness of the mind.
I mustn't infect too many young men.
How unique and irreplaceable Johnny is.
And yet, how little I realise this
when I am with him.
That's always been a problem.
But living in a world where such a love is illegal,
and trying to live open and honest
is a complete contradiction.
I have...known...Johnny three times.
And each time I began with feeling
that there was nothing wrong.
But after,
I felt shamed.
JOHNNY: What are you thinking?
Oh, just some...
...idea.
What idea?
Well, for many years at the centre of philosophy
was a picture of the lonely human soul
brooding over its private experiences.
Yeah, everyone knows that.
This soul is a prisoner of his own body,
and he's locked out from contact with others
by the walls of their bodies.
I wanted to get rid of this picture.
There is no private meaning.
We are what we are... only because...
...we share a common language
and common forms of life.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Do you understand what I'm saying?
(Like a toff) Yes.
Yes, I'd like that very much. Yes, Wednesday.
Oh, does that suit you?
It suits me fine, yes.
Yes. I thought so, yes.
Yes, he was. Really?
Oh, Bertie? Yes, I know, yes, yes.
For many years, yes.
(Normal voice) Christ!
Professor, you once said the Tractatus
had solved all the problems of philosophy.
Yes.
So I thought at the time.
What I meant was that I tried to show
the sort of things that philosophy could say,
and these aren't really important.
What's much more important
is all the things it can't articulate.
Doesn't cut the mustard, philosophy?
- You think.
- That's right.
So I thought at the time.
In fact, I still think so, but for different reasons.
Now, talking about your more recent work,
the Philosophical Investigations and so on.
That's right. In this later work I abandoned
the idea that language is a sort of picture.
That's just a misleading metaphor.
I mean, you might say that the word "handbag"
is a picture of a handbag.
But what about words like "hello",
"perhaps", "oh, hell",
what do they give us a picture of?
So how would you now define the relationship
between language and the world?
Oh, in lots of different ways.
My mistake had been to think that
there was only one way of talking at stake here.
I came to see that there are
lots of different things we do with language.
Different language games, as I call them.
And the meaning of the word is just the way
it's used in a particular language game.
And what do you now believe
the task of philosophy to be?
Philosophical puzzles arise because we tend
to mix up one language game with another.
For example, people puzzle over
the nature of something they call the "soul".
But this may just be because they're thinking
of the soul along the lines of a physical object.
They're confusing
one way of talking with another.
The job of philosophy
is to sort out these language games?
Exactly.
They're all perfectly in order as they are.
Philosophy in no sense can question them.
Philosophy leaves everything exactly as it is.
Professor Wittgenstein,
you've been associated with the argument
that there can't be a private language.
Could you explain this a little?
What I mean is this,
we learn to use words,
because we belong to a culture.
A form of life.
A practical way of doing things.
In the end, we speak as we do,
because of what we do.
And all this is a properly public affair.
Philosophers in the tradition of Descartes
start from the lonely self,
brooding over its private sensations.
I want to overturn this centuries-old model.
I want to start from our culture,
our shared practical life together,
and look at what we think and feel,
and say it in these public terms.
Professor, thank you very much.
I'm thinking of going away.
Not again, Ludwig.
You've spent your entire life running away.
I'm serious, Maynard.
Where to this time?
Norway? Vienna?
Swansea?
Not the Soviet Union again?
What's wrong with the Soviet Union?
The place is one enormous labour camp.
There's nothing wrong with labour.
There is if they shoot you for not doing it.
I want to give up teaching philosophy
and concentrate on my book.
Why not do it in Cambridge, and be paid?
I'm going to Ireland to live by the sea.
In Ireland they shoot you if you work.
Oh, Ludwig.
I know,
I'm a complete bloody disaster.
We love you.
(Waves lap gently)
Dr Wittgenstein.
Oh, you're here. Good.
At last.
You couldn't have chosen a more remote place.
Well, how's the work on your book?
Creeping along.
That means you've penned a masterpiece.
What's the news from the doctor?
- It's not good, I'm afraid.
- I hope it's not anything serious.
Last week I saw a specialist in Dublin.
I have cancer of the prostate.
Oh, I'm sorry.
It responds well to hormone treatment
at early stages.
Is there anything I can do?
Don't think I'm afraid of dying.
It's death that gives life its meaning and shape.
You can take me back to Cambridge.
I don't want to die here.
Any time you like.
You know,
I'd quite like to have composed a philosophical
work which consisted entirely of jokes.
Why didn't you?
Sadly, I didn't have a sense of humour.
Let me tell you a little story.
There was once a young man who dreamed
of reducing the world to pure logic.
Because he was a very clever young man,
he actually managed to do it.
When he'd finished his work,
he stood back and admired it.
It was beautiful.
A world purged
of imperfection and indeterminacy.
Countless acres of gleaming ice
stretching to the horizon.
So the clever young man looked around the
world he'd created and decided to explore it.
He took one step forward
and fell flat on his back.
You see, he'd forgotten about friction.
The ice was smooth and level and stainless.
But you couldn't walk there.
So the clever young man sat down
and wept bitter tears.
But as he grew into a wise old man,
he came to understand that
roughness and ambiguity aren't imperfections,
they're what make the world turn.
He wanted to run and dance.
And the words
and things scattered upon the ground
were all battered
and tarnished and ambiguous.
The wise old man
saw that that was the way things were.
But something in him
was still homesick for the ice,
where everything was radiant and absolute
and relentless.
Though he had come to like
the idea of the rough ground,
he couldn't bring himself to live there.
So now he was marooned
between earth and ice, at home in neither.
And this was the cause of all his grief.
MOZART: Rondo in A Minor, K511
Hail Chromodynamics, Lord of Quantum.
This is Quark, Charm and Strangeness
reporting.
Concerning the philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein deceased.
The solution to the riddle of life
in space and time
lies outside space and time.
But as you know and I know,
there are no riddles.
If a question can be put at all,
it can also be answered.
CSAR FRANCK:
Sonata for violin and piano in A Major