Books : Flawed Portrait of a Tormented Man

Wittgenstein: A Life: Young Ludwig 1889-1921 by Brian McGuinness (University of California Press: $22.50; 322 pages)

A great painting captures the essence of a thing in the way a snapshot frequently does not. The photograph accurately represents everything that’s there, and the painting may take liberties with this or that, but the painting winds up being more insightful and “truer.” In the same way, great literature tells us more about the human condition than all of sociology put together.

Having recently read Bruce Duffy’s extraordinary novel, “The World as I Found It” (Ticknor & Fields)--a novel about the life of the 20th-Century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein--I wondered how a biography of Wittgenstein would compare. Wittgenstein, perhaps the greatest philosopher this century has seen, has not had a full-length biographical treatment until now.

He was a deeply tormented and complicated man, difficult to deal with, always unsatisfied, craving affection yet constantly pushing people away, haunted by suicide (three of his brothers killed themselves)--a man who never found peace. In the bargain he produced two seminal works of philosophy, the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” in his early life, and “Philosophical Investigations” later on.

Whichever it is, Wittgenstein set philosophy on a new course, emphasizing the meaning of language and its inherent inadequacy in describing the world. The last line of the “Tractatus” continues to be frequently quoted: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” At the least, any biography of Wittgenstein must make sense of the elements of philosophy and personality, where they came from and how they played out in Wittgenstein’s life.

“Wittgenstein: A Life: Young Ludwig 1889-1921,” is the first volume of a projected two-volume biography. It covers the first half of Wittgenstein’s life, from his extremely privileged childhood in Vienna (his demanding father was a great steel magnate, the Andrew Carnegie of Austria) to his study with Bertrand Russell at Cambridge University before World War I, to his first period as a hermit in Norway in 1913-14, to his experiences as an Austrian soldier and prisoner during the war (during which he wrote the “Tractatus”), to his renunciation of his inherited fortune, and finally to the publication of the “Tractatus” in 1921.

Short of the Mark

But try as he does--and he tries very hard--McGuinness fails to get inside his subject’s mind. He never manages to unpack him. McGuinness links Wittgenstein’s emotional life to his philosophical development, but he doesn’t quite make it convincing in the way that Bruce Duffy does in his novel.

“There is a striking parallel between (Wittgenstein’s) problems with his personality and his problems with logic,” McGuinness writes. “ The fundamental problem of logic had to be solved and he had to become a new person. In quite what respects, we can only guess: his aim was to be simple, direct, fundamental, understanding, strong; above all, to be himself, not to be pretending to be any of these things. . . .

“As to why these problems were felt particularly acutely at this time, it is natural to suppose that his father while alive had provided a framework of expectations within which Ludwig could live: now he was forced to define his own personality in a largely female family to whose standards he did not feel ready to submit.”

Veiled Reference

This last sentence may be a veiled reference to Wittgenstein’s homosexuality, which is otherwise completely absent from this biography except for a passing reference in a footnote. McGuinness seems stuck in the era when homosexuality was the love that dared not speak its name. Its virtual omission from this would-be authoritative biography is startling.

In a sense, Wittgenstein’s philosophy is demonstrated by comparing Duffy’s novel based on his life with McGuinness’ biography. In the “Tractatus” Wittgenstein wrote, “There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest . They are what is mystical.”

The biography portrays the part that can be said. The novel, much better written and much more compelling, conveys what cannot.