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Private Notebooks: 1914-1916
Written in code under constant threat of battle, Wittgenstein’s searing and illuminating diaries finally emerge in this first-ever English translation.
During the pandemic, Marjorie Perloff, one of our foremost scholars of global literature, found her mind ineluctably drawn to the profound commentary on life and death in the wartime diaries of eminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889�1951). Upon learning that these notebooks, which richly contextualize the early stages of his magnum opus, the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, had never before been published in English, the Viennese-born Perloff determinedly set about translating them. Beginning with the anxious summer of 1914, this historic, en-face edition presents the first-person recollections of a foot soldier in the Austrian Army, fresh from his days as a philosophy student at Cambridge, who must grapple with the hazing of his fellow soldiers, the stirrings of a forbidden sexuality, and the formation of an explosive analytical philosophy that seemed to draw meaning from his endless brushes with death. Much like Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief, Private Notebooks takes us on a personal journey to discovery as it augments our knowledge of Wittgenstein himself.
During the pandemic, Marjorie Perloff, one of our foremost scholars of global literature, found her mind ineluctably drawn to the profound commentary on life and death in the wartime diaries of eminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889�1951). Upon learning that these notebooks, which richly contextualize the early stages of his magnum opus, the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, had never before been published in English, the Viennese-born Perloff determinedly set about translating them. Beginning with the anxious summer of 1914, this historic, en-face edition presents the first-person recollections of a foot soldier in the Austrian Army, fresh from his days as a philosophy student at Cambridge, who must grapple with the hazing of his fellow soldiers, the stirrings of a forbidden sexuality, and the formation of an explosive analytical philosophy that seemed to draw meaning from his endless brushes with death. Much like Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief, Private Notebooks takes us on a personal journey to discovery as it augments our knowledge of Wittgenstein himself.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 5, 2022
12 people are currently reading
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About the author
Ludwig Wittgenstein
194Ìýbooks2,788ÌýfollowersLudwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1929) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements: the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations". Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.
Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements: the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations". Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
December 26, 2022
Upon finishing these notebooks I texted my best friend, So -apparently it was underfed wanking which led to the Tractatus.
The entries are mildly interesting in themselves, instances of being bullied by peers and terrified at imminent death by Russian artillery. There is also considerable self-loathing which I can relate to these days.
A trusted authority has said this was poetry and I fear I failed to regard it as such.
The entries are mildly interesting in themselves, instances of being bullied by peers and terrified at imminent death by Russian artillery. There is also considerable self-loathing which I can relate to these days.
A trusted authority has said this was poetry and I fear I failed to regard it as such.
June 29, 2022
wittgenstein: *fails to work, gets bullied by his colleagues, jerks off, reads poetry*
me: he just like me fr
me: he just like me fr
June 1, 2022
I’m sure Wittgenstein would be very pleased to know that people like me are rating and reviewing his private and intentionally coded war-time journal entries about his personal failings, spiritual yearnings and sexual inclinations. 4/5.
The editor/translator seems to have chosen to include prefaces, notes, an introduction and an afterword for no other reason than to satify her own vanity and justify her scholastic existence; however, the actual design of the book (i.e., typography, inclusion of pictures, general "aesthetic," etc.) is A+.
The editor/translator seems to have chosen to include prefaces, notes, an introduction and an afterword for no other reason than to satify her own vanity and justify her scholastic existence; however, the actual design of the book (i.e., typography, inclusion of pictures, general "aesthetic," etc.) is A+.
January 11, 2025
Even geniuses struggle with self-doubt and procrastination just like the rest of us.
A deeper review to follow after I have gathered my thoughts.
A deeper review to follow after I have gathered my thoughts.
October 20, 2022
fixation on not working hard enough; hatred of day job; love of m-dashes; strongly featuring wwi galicia; brief mention of the balloon division (!!!)
I am but a worm but through God I can become a man!
basically he has the disposition of me in my misanthropic freshman year of high school except I didn’t come out of it having written the tractatus xoxox
I am but a worm but through God I can become a man!
basically he has the disposition of me in my misanthropic freshman year of high school except I didn’t come out of it having written the tractatus xoxox
April 10, 2022
A poignant picture of the “behind the scenes� of the Tractatus. A whole lot of nothing happens in the first two notebooks. Most of the entries are about how much work he gets done. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, sometimes none at all.
In the third notebook, written while Wittgenstein was on the front lines of the war and facing the possibility of death, suddenly his writing blooms into beautiful spiritual, religious poems. From these entries we come to see that the Tractatus is really a guide on how to face death without fear.
In the third notebook, written while Wittgenstein was on the front lines of the war and facing the possibility of death, suddenly his writing blooms into beautiful spiritual, religious poems. From these entries we come to see that the Tractatus is really a guide on how to face death without fear.
May 7, 2022
Read my commentary here:
February 27, 2025
The world is not real why did they publish his personal journals ðŸ˜. Wittengstein is so real though
“Am not quite in the mood for work. Reading a great deal. Watch duty tonight. Have done almost no work. A little worried about my
future.
“Dark mood. Strong sexual desire. Feeling lonely. .�
“Yesterday for the first ime in 3 weeks. masturbated. I am almost entirely free of sexual desire.�
“If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed.�
“Am not quite in the mood for work. Reading a great deal. Watch duty tonight. Have done almost no work. A little worried about my
future.
“Dark mood. Strong sexual desire. Feeling lonely. .�
“Yesterday for the first ime in 3 weeks. masturbated. I am almost entirely free of sexual desire.�
“If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed.�
March 20, 2023
Entre balance del trabajo intelectual del dÃa y recuento de la cantidad de acciones onanistas de la semana, entre anotaciones sobre los acontecimientos de su vida privada y comentarios sobre la situación bélica de aquellos años, Wittgenstein a veces introduce reflexiones sobre la posibilidad de vivir una vida sin sentido o sobre cómo poder convivir con el infierno de los otros. No sé si me lo he leÃdo entero, pero no son unos diarios cualesquiera y, aunque Cata se confundiera con los diarios de los años 30, los "Diarios secretos" son una lectura que conectan también con el más Ãntimo Ludwig Wittgenstein.
May 9, 2022
The blurbs lie! There's absolutely nothing exciting to be seen here -- nothing additive to the philosophy itself and nothing interesting about the great man's external life or inner world either. It's hard for me to understand how there was even enough here to justify publication. For professional academics and true Wittgenstein fan-boys only.
August 28, 2022
9/10 - Genius and hilarious and sad, all of this and more if you read it with Natalia.
Read
March 10, 2025A lot of reference to masturbation.
April 12, 2022
Wittgenstein kept these notebooks, three of them, during his military service in WWI. They are intriguing and quite moving. The entries here are what he wrote to himself in private code on the verso (left) side of the notebook. They have not been published before. (The entries on the recto (right) side of the notebooks were his thoughts leading to the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus; these entries were published long ago.)
Two major elements of his personality and thought emerge via these brief, pungent comments
Personality: At age 25-27, Wittgenstein volunteered as a kind of test. He seems to have wanted to know how he could mesh with other soldier/sailors and what his reaction would be to the perils of war. Although he was born to a wealthy family and inherited great wealth as a consequence, he was a humble person and a courteous person. This didn't help him get along with his shipmates on a river patrol boat. They were bores and oafs and apparently picked on him and annoyed him incessantly. So he withdrew to the best of his ability and circumstance. The problem was that he did have homosexual urges that made him quite lonely, and in wartime he could hear little from loved ones via letter. So he monitored his masturbation in these notebooks and he alluded to shore leaves that involved visits to "baths." Neither activity seems to have given him a lot of relief. But this aspect of the notebooks shouldn't be overstated because Wittgenstein had an ascetic streak that was driving him to discover how he could shed his sense of self altogether. This led to hazardous duty and consideration of suicide. He seems to have been sincere in wanting to bait death and either prove his courage or succumb to his cowardice. This desire complemented his evident religiosity. He wanted to leave himself in God's care and wrestled with the idea of God all the time.
Looking at these notebooks on a philosophical plane, we can see important outcomes. Through war and deep thought, Wittgenstein was cultivating detachment and accepting the limits of what we can know...or affect. It's easy to see the influence of Schopenhauer (and thereby Hinduism) on him. He developed a notion of existence as illusion and fate as a force beyond the ken of mankind. In particular he seized on the idea that the fundamental illusion is what we tell ourselves with words.
The challenge of Wittgenstein has been that he entered into the realm of pure thought via logic but he never shed his deep feeling that a spiritual or quasi-mystical understanding offered better, if frustrating, results. He was a man in self-conflict, as these notebooks reveal (and as his entire biography reveals). The fact that Wittgenstein often presented philosophical findings enigmatically, through results that were not bolstered by an accompanying explanation of the methods that led him to these results, may perhaps be attributed a kind of self-cancellation. The ideas that he explored were hard won and powerful but if the truth about existence is that it is an illusion woven of words and his ideas were ultimately conveyed by words, what were they worth?
Later in life, after the war, during his long tenure at Cambridge, Wittgenstein devoted intense energy to philosophizing for the benefit of his students on the spot, as it were. Perhaps the quirkiness of his long silences broken now and then by philosophical eruptions can be traced back to his military service. I say "perhaps." I don't know. But for Wittgenstein the value of "now" in wartime was immense. Anything can happen now in wartime and little that happens before or after now signifies much. Let's say the past and the future are inexistent when you are under fire and add the thought that the past and the future are illusions of almost no value. Let's go beyond that and place the wartime truth that you are not in control of your fate in the context of Wittgenstein's larger conclusion that you are not in control of your fate at any point. Schopenhauer would have said the same. Nietzsche tried to go beyond Schopenhauer, but Wittgenstein was drawing the conclusion in these notebooks that nothing self-based matters. Nothing. One could not even wrap oneself in the Divine with the confidence that this would lead to good. It might lead to evil. Ethics, he writes here, is a nonstarter. How does he explain that? He doesn't, but I am trying to do so here based on the fragments recorded in three little books that were overlooked, never published, until 100 years after they were jotted down by a lonely man on a boat, in a barracks, occupied for most of his day by tasks that should have been humiliating for him but weren't either because he wanted to be humiliated or he thought no one can be humiliated since humiliation is just another illusion.
Two major elements of his personality and thought emerge via these brief, pungent comments
Personality: At age 25-27, Wittgenstein volunteered as a kind of test. He seems to have wanted to know how he could mesh with other soldier/sailors and what his reaction would be to the perils of war. Although he was born to a wealthy family and inherited great wealth as a consequence, he was a humble person and a courteous person. This didn't help him get along with his shipmates on a river patrol boat. They were bores and oafs and apparently picked on him and annoyed him incessantly. So he withdrew to the best of his ability and circumstance. The problem was that he did have homosexual urges that made him quite lonely, and in wartime he could hear little from loved ones via letter. So he monitored his masturbation in these notebooks and he alluded to shore leaves that involved visits to "baths." Neither activity seems to have given him a lot of relief. But this aspect of the notebooks shouldn't be overstated because Wittgenstein had an ascetic streak that was driving him to discover how he could shed his sense of self altogether. This led to hazardous duty and consideration of suicide. He seems to have been sincere in wanting to bait death and either prove his courage or succumb to his cowardice. This desire complemented his evident religiosity. He wanted to leave himself in God's care and wrestled with the idea of God all the time.
Looking at these notebooks on a philosophical plane, we can see important outcomes. Through war and deep thought, Wittgenstein was cultivating detachment and accepting the limits of what we can know...or affect. It's easy to see the influence of Schopenhauer (and thereby Hinduism) on him. He developed a notion of existence as illusion and fate as a force beyond the ken of mankind. In particular he seized on the idea that the fundamental illusion is what we tell ourselves with words.
The challenge of Wittgenstein has been that he entered into the realm of pure thought via logic but he never shed his deep feeling that a spiritual or quasi-mystical understanding offered better, if frustrating, results. He was a man in self-conflict, as these notebooks reveal (and as his entire biography reveals). The fact that Wittgenstein often presented philosophical findings enigmatically, through results that were not bolstered by an accompanying explanation of the methods that led him to these results, may perhaps be attributed a kind of self-cancellation. The ideas that he explored were hard won and powerful but if the truth about existence is that it is an illusion woven of words and his ideas were ultimately conveyed by words, what were they worth?
Later in life, after the war, during his long tenure at Cambridge, Wittgenstein devoted intense energy to philosophizing for the benefit of his students on the spot, as it were. Perhaps the quirkiness of his long silences broken now and then by philosophical eruptions can be traced back to his military service. I say "perhaps." I don't know. But for Wittgenstein the value of "now" in wartime was immense. Anything can happen now in wartime and little that happens before or after now signifies much. Let's say the past and the future are inexistent when you are under fire and add the thought that the past and the future are illusions of almost no value. Let's go beyond that and place the wartime truth that you are not in control of your fate in the context of Wittgenstein's larger conclusion that you are not in control of your fate at any point. Schopenhauer would have said the same. Nietzsche tried to go beyond Schopenhauer, but Wittgenstein was drawing the conclusion in these notebooks that nothing self-based matters. Nothing. One could not even wrap oneself in the Divine with the confidence that this would lead to good. It might lead to evil. Ethics, he writes here, is a nonstarter. How does he explain that? He doesn't, but I am trying to do so here based on the fragments recorded in three little books that were overlooked, never published, until 100 years after they were jotted down by a lonely man on a boat, in a barracks, occupied for most of his day by tasks that should have been humiliating for him but weren't either because he wanted to be humiliated or he thought no one can be humiliated since humiliation is just another illusion.
September 11, 2022
An extraordinary publication - the first in English in this depth - of Wittgenstein's private mental, emotional and philosophical record during his difficult time serving below the status of officer in WWI, on the German/Austrian side. This was the gestation of the Tractatus. At this early stage still his connections intellectually were mostly with the Cambridge school. Wittgenstein came from one of the wealthiest families in Austria.; his famous pianist brother lost an arm in battle, spent POW time in Siberia and thereafter commissioned pieces for the left hand. Even while living a personally ascetic life (before giving away or renouncing his fortune) he gave money anonymously to support several artists, including Rilke. This record is made even more interesting for Marjorie Perloff's detailed contextual setting, faithful translation and sympathy and understanding. Her honesty in discussing Wittgenstein's gay sexuality and his own words are compelling. His first love, David Pinsent, died in 1918 not because of wounds in battle but in a flying accident at England's aircraft testing facility. The Tractatus concludes with statements about how life is timeless when lived in the present. That perspective is deepened with these wartime notebooks as background. The dramatic history biography of the Wittgenstein family, plagued by suicides, persecuted by the Germans in WWII, is told in another great book, The House of Wittgenstein.
August 28, 2022
Never knew I needed to read Wittgenstein say “Alas�, “I will kill myself.� and “Will I ever work again??!!!� but I so did.
December 6, 2022
Invaluable
August 23, 2021
“Non sarebbe meglio andare tristemente alla deriva nella lotta senza speranza contro il mondo esterno? Ma una vita del genere è priva di senso. E perché non condurre una vita senza senso? È indegno? Ma cosa devo fare affinché la mia vita non vada sprecata? Devo sempre essere cosciente dello spirito, esserne sempre cosciente� (8-12-1914)
Il testo propone i pensieri che Wittgeinstein scrisse mentre si trovava in guerra sul fronte orientale. Questi diari sono “segreti� perché inizialmente non pubblicati dai curatori letterari testamentari.
Queste annotazioni furono scritte in codice parallelamente alla stesura delle riflessioni poi pubblicate col nome di “Quaderni, 1914-16�.
In questi “Diari segreti� incontriamo un Wittgeinstein “nuovo� e intimo. Per quanto ogni tanto si riescano a notare tracce di quello che poi sarà lo scrittore del “Tractatus�, Wittgeinstein in queste note personali è molto insicuro, a disagio in mezzo alle altre persone, in difficoltà nel suo lavoro di pensiero. È un Wittgeinstein molto diverso dal tono “profetico� che sembra assumere nel “Tractatus�.
Parla dei suoi superiori, disprezza volgarità e bassezze della maggior parte dei compagni d’arme, racconta delle sue letture al fronte, della continua ed estenuante stanchezza, della difficoltà di lavorare e pensare quando si sentono gli aerei sopra le proprie teste.
Si tratta di un testo prezioso per chi fosse interessato ad approfondire Wittgeinstein.
Metto 5 stelle, perché trovo impossibile riuscire a giudicare con un sistema numerico i diari intimi e le memorie di un altro essere umano.
Il testo propone i pensieri che Wittgeinstein scrisse mentre si trovava in guerra sul fronte orientale. Questi diari sono “segreti� perché inizialmente non pubblicati dai curatori letterari testamentari.
Queste annotazioni furono scritte in codice parallelamente alla stesura delle riflessioni poi pubblicate col nome di “Quaderni, 1914-16�.
In questi “Diari segreti� incontriamo un Wittgeinstein “nuovo� e intimo. Per quanto ogni tanto si riescano a notare tracce di quello che poi sarà lo scrittore del “Tractatus�, Wittgeinstein in queste note personali è molto insicuro, a disagio in mezzo alle altre persone, in difficoltà nel suo lavoro di pensiero. È un Wittgeinstein molto diverso dal tono “profetico� che sembra assumere nel “Tractatus�.
Parla dei suoi superiori, disprezza volgarità e bassezze della maggior parte dei compagni d’arme, racconta delle sue letture al fronte, della continua ed estenuante stanchezza, della difficoltà di lavorare e pensare quando si sentono gli aerei sopra le proprie teste.
Si tratta di un testo prezioso per chi fosse interessato ad approfondire Wittgeinstein.
Metto 5 stelle, perché trovo impossibile riuscire a giudicare con un sistema numerico i diari intimi e le memorie di un altro essere umano.
September 5, 2024
Very insightful to the person of Wittgenstein. The translator wishes to hyper focus on Wittgenstein’s sexuality. I think noting the tone that the private notebooks take towards his sexuality is worth noting. However, I think that the translator is somewhat too concerned with this feature. Many other things are revealed about Wittgenstein the man than just his sexuality in these previously unpublished writings. His sensitivity to seemingly trivial matters, his internal religious struggle, his constant concern to be living an ethical life, etc. Anyone who is interested in complimenting their reading of Wittgenstein’s other works with this text will profit significantly.
July 16, 2022
An interesting insight into Wittgenstein's life during WW1 in the form of a coded notebook/diary written in conjunction with the work he was doing to formulate his philosophy. His frustrations with the other soldiers with whom he has to share his living space are more than apparent, but he is at least aware of how grumpy he is. Although nothing is explicitly written down there are hints about some sexual encounters, which cause more mental anguish because of his religious beliefs. One for those interested in the finer details of his life.
April 15, 2022
A fascinating historical document and certainly a must-read for Wittgenstein completists, even if much of the text is limited to variations on the following three themes:
1) Nicht gearbeitet. ("[I] did no work.")
2) Jeder haßt mich. ("Everybody hates me.")
3) Heute wieder onaniert. ("[I] Roughed Up the Suspect again today.")
Things begin to open up a bit in the third notebook, in which W. begins making significant progress on the Tractatus.
1) Nicht gearbeitet. ("[I] did no work.")
2) Jeder haßt mich. ("Everybody hates me.")
3) Heute wieder onaniert. ("[I] Roughed Up the Suspect again today.")
Things begin to open up a bit in the third notebook, in which W. begins making significant progress on the Tractatus.
June 22, 2022
This book ought to be read only by readers who've spent time with the Tractatus. It made me realize that the Tractatus can (should?) be read as an example of WW1 literature. It makes me want to reread it alongside David Jones, Ernst Jünger, and other writers who saw combat.
I'm not convinced by Perloff's arguments about Wittgenstein's homosexuality, and I wish she had included all of the recto pages. I can't imagine why she didn't.
I'm not convinced by Perloff's arguments about Wittgenstein's homosexuality, and I wish she had included all of the recto pages. I can't imagine why she didn't.
January 30, 2024
i found the Perloff intros and addendums to be devoutly starved and unilluminating, for lack of better words, but the actual journals are fun. his "Completely asexual today" got a chuckle out of me. the coded comments about sexuality are of some interest but honestly doesn't really do or mean much. seems to me that Wittgenstein was confused and maybe even a little repulsed by his sexuality in general with little regard towards hetero or homosexual designations.
December 5, 2022
Refreshing - proves the humanity a philosopher whose biographers and executors seem to think a holy relic. Editor works to dispel myth, my main issue being that she offers slightly too much to shape the reader’s interpretation of events that are not simple in their influence. Her translation is fluent, and preserves the original well, the inclusion of which was much appreciated.
October 25, 2024
Los cuadernos privados de Wittgenstein, filósofo referencial del siglo XX, escritos mientras se encontraba en el frente de guerra. Ahà aparecen, a salpicones, notas de su Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus. Imprescindible.
October 25, 2022
love to hear his prayers. particularly when he thinks he's bout to be killed. Thy will be done. Pretty sure I'm religious now. Also 5 stars for first-hand descriptions of his masturbation routine.
July 23, 2024
"He indeed believed that one should be � as his father had been, and as his brother Hans had been, and as all geniuses are � a creature of impulse. But he also had an almost overbearing sense of duty, and was prone to periodically crippling self-doubts." (Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein)
Marjorie Perloff’s translation of Wittgenstein’s private notebooks was my second purchase (alongside ) in Shakespeare & Company Booksellers in Vienna’s Sterngasse on a sweltering June day.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889�1951) was the most charismatic - and impulsive - figure in philosophy of the twentieth century. He had a brilliant young mind and a curiosity that led him away from Vienna to the United Kingdom, first to Manchester and then to Cambridge, where he enchanted Bertrand Russell. Russell introduced him to John Maynard Keynes and the liberal living Apostles - a Cambridge club of intellectual elites. He took several other young mathematicians, including David Pinsent and Frank Ramsey, under his wing. Wittgenstein was infatuated with Pinsent, who died tragically in an aviation accident. Wittgenstein’s magnus opus - Tractatus - is dedicated to him. Frank Ramsey made the first translation of Tractatus from German to English under the guidance of Ogden. Ramsey, a brilliant mathematician on par with Cambridge’s Ramanujan - the man who knew infinity - died tragically at age 26.
Wittgenstein was born into colossal wealth in Vienna. Before the First World War, he pledged a significant amount of money to various artistic causes, and after the war, he would give his entire fortune away. After spending time in the UK, he decamped to Norway for solitude and writing, and then, at the start of the First World War, was quick to sign up for military service with the Austrian army. During the early war period of 1914-1916, he kept a detailed diary, filling several notebooks, of which only three survived. The notebooks were written in German; the pages on the left were the private daily record of his life and torments, written using a childish code (A=Z, B=Y, etc.), and the pages on the right contained his ‘work�. Later in the war, when he was a prisoner under the Italians, this record became a series of numbered epigrams dealing with the limits of knowledge, language, and philosophical thought -the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (or Tractatus for short). He completed the work in 1919, but it would take three years to get published. In doing so, and in his subsequent work, he fathered two significant movements, logical atomism and logical positivism.
Wittgenstein was originally from a Jewish family (there were around 140,000 Jews in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, out of a population of around one million), but converted to Catholicism and eventually exhibited pious Protestantism. During his service in World War 1, he was absorbed by Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief, which he carried around ‘like a talisman� (Notebook 1). In 1914, he felt Christianity was the only sure path to happiness. His daily diary is full of Amens and punctuated prayers, in addition to recording his fears, anxieties and sexual frustrations. It also records his longing for his dear friend (and first platonic lover) David Pinsent.
Wittgenstein’s early influences included the Dutch 17th-century moral philosopher Spinoza (who, during the day, worked as an optical lens grinder), the 18th-century Goethe, and the 19th-century Nietzsche. During the war, he found solace in his thoughts and, like Spinoza, even in menial tasks.
His mind ‘work� eventually became the Tractatus. His day job (other than peeling potatoes) was as a lookout on an Austrian Naval ship, traversing the Vistula River, which ran from South to North in what is now Poland, starting in the mountains and emptying into the Baltic Sea near Gdansk. He struggles with his work. Some days are an intellectual desert, and he often writes that he has a great idea ‘on the tip of his tongue� but can’t seem to find the ‘redeeming� words.
On 22nd November 1914, he writes, “At this point, I am again trying to express something that won’t let itself be expressed�. This foreshadows a twisted version of his famous closing proposition: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent�.
Language becomes a pivotal link to thought for Wittgenstein. On 23rd May 1915, he writes “The limits of my language mean the limit of my world.� (See Tractatus 5)
He also grapples with free will and pre-destination: “The great problem around which everything I write revolves is: Is there a priori an order in the world, and if so, of what does it consist?� (Notebook 2: 1st June 1915)
In 1916, Wittgenstein was transferred to the Austrian infantry and volunteered to fight the Russians at the Eastern Front in Southern Galicia, now Ukraine. Promoted to Lance Bombardier, he continued his philosophical work and, by the summer, was sketching out what became Tractatus 6.371, despite a fateful acceptance of the likelihood of his sudden death.
The reality of war helped sharpen his focus and his thinking. On 4th July 1916, he writes:-
To me, this sounds reminiscent of Walt Whitman’s Oh Me! Oh Life (Leaves of Grass, 1855). Whitman was a contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and sent his self-published Leaves of Grass to Emerson in July 1855. Wittgenstein started reading Emerson’s essays in November 1914 and may have been influenced by Emerson and Whitman’s transcendentalism. This might explain Wittgenstein's resolve that ‘the powerful play goes on�, and he is determined to contribute at least seven verses.
A month later, resigned to the horrors of war, he writes “the world is independent of my will" (Tractatus 6.3.7.3), which echoes Schopenhauer’s theorems.
Wittgenstein suffered from depressive impulses and bore a sense of guilt about his homosexuality. He also contemplated suicide. Three of his brothers had taken their own lives. The fact that Wittgenstein never succumbed to suicide (he died of cancer in 1951) may be due to his channeling of Socrates on 10th January 1917: -
His diary notes and thoughts eventually became the Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus, first published in 1922. This would be Wittgenstein's only work published in his lifetime. The diary notes are a fascinating window into the soul of a tormented genius. Perloff has done an excellent job bringing them to light and putting them in context with a helpful Introduction and Afterward.
I gave the book five stars.
Marjorie Perloff’s translation of Wittgenstein’s private notebooks was my second purchase (alongside ) in Shakespeare & Company Booksellers in Vienna’s Sterngasse on a sweltering June day.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889�1951) was the most charismatic - and impulsive - figure in philosophy of the twentieth century. He had a brilliant young mind and a curiosity that led him away from Vienna to the United Kingdom, first to Manchester and then to Cambridge, where he enchanted Bertrand Russell. Russell introduced him to John Maynard Keynes and the liberal living Apostles - a Cambridge club of intellectual elites. He took several other young mathematicians, including David Pinsent and Frank Ramsey, under his wing. Wittgenstein was infatuated with Pinsent, who died tragically in an aviation accident. Wittgenstein’s magnus opus - Tractatus - is dedicated to him. Frank Ramsey made the first translation of Tractatus from German to English under the guidance of Ogden. Ramsey, a brilliant mathematician on par with Cambridge’s Ramanujan - the man who knew infinity - died tragically at age 26.
Wittgenstein was born into colossal wealth in Vienna. Before the First World War, he pledged a significant amount of money to various artistic causes, and after the war, he would give his entire fortune away. After spending time in the UK, he decamped to Norway for solitude and writing, and then, at the start of the First World War, was quick to sign up for military service with the Austrian army. During the early war period of 1914-1916, he kept a detailed diary, filling several notebooks, of which only three survived. The notebooks were written in German; the pages on the left were the private daily record of his life and torments, written using a childish code (A=Z, B=Y, etc.), and the pages on the right contained his ‘work�. Later in the war, when he was a prisoner under the Italians, this record became a series of numbered epigrams dealing with the limits of knowledge, language, and philosophical thought -the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (or Tractatus for short). He completed the work in 1919, but it would take three years to get published. In doing so, and in his subsequent work, he fathered two significant movements, logical atomism and logical positivism.
Wittgenstein was originally from a Jewish family (there were around 140,000 Jews in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, out of a population of around one million), but converted to Catholicism and eventually exhibited pious Protestantism. During his service in World War 1, he was absorbed by Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief, which he carried around ‘like a talisman� (Notebook 1). In 1914, he felt Christianity was the only sure path to happiness. His daily diary is full of Amens and punctuated prayers, in addition to recording his fears, anxieties and sexual frustrations. It also records his longing for his dear friend (and first platonic lover) David Pinsent.
Wittgenstein’s early influences included the Dutch 17th-century moral philosopher Spinoza (who, during the day, worked as an optical lens grinder), the 18th-century Goethe, and the 19th-century Nietzsche. During the war, he found solace in his thoughts and, like Spinoza, even in menial tasks.
“I’m in a good mood, worked again. I can think best right now when I am peeling potatoes. Always volunteer for it. It is for me what grinding leases was for Spinoza.� (Notebook 1: 15th August 1914)
His mind ‘work� eventually became the Tractatus. His day job (other than peeling potatoes) was as a lookout on an Austrian Naval ship, traversing the Vistula River, which ran from South to North in what is now Poland, starting in the mountains and emptying into the Baltic Sea near Gdansk. He struggles with his work. Some days are an intellectual desert, and he often writes that he has a great idea ‘on the tip of his tongue� but can’t seem to find the ‘redeeming� words.
On 22nd November 1914, he writes, “At this point, I am again trying to express something that won’t let itself be expressed�. This foreshadows a twisted version of his famous closing proposition: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent�.
Language becomes a pivotal link to thought for Wittgenstein. On 23rd May 1915, he writes “The limits of my language mean the limit of my world.� (See Tractatus 5)
He also grapples with free will and pre-destination: “The great problem around which everything I write revolves is: Is there a priori an order in the world, and if so, of what does it consist?� (Notebook 2: 1st June 1915)
In 1916, Wittgenstein was transferred to the Austrian infantry and volunteered to fight the Russians at the Eastern Front in Southern Galicia, now Ukraine. Promoted to Lance Bombardier, he continued his philosophical work and, by the summer, was sketching out what became Tractatus 6.371, despite a fateful acceptance of the likelihood of his sudden death.
The reality of war helped sharpen his focus and his thinking. On 4th July 1916, he writes:-
“I know that the world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning, that this meaning does not lie in it but outside it.� (Tractatus 6.4.1).
To me, this sounds reminiscent of Walt Whitman’s Oh Me! Oh Life (Leaves of Grass, 1855). Whitman was a contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and sent his self-published Leaves of Grass to Emerson in July 1855. Wittgenstein started reading Emerson’s essays in November 1914 and may have been influenced by Emerson and Whitman’s transcendentalism. This might explain Wittgenstein's resolve that ‘the powerful play goes on�, and he is determined to contribute at least seven verses.
A month later, resigned to the horrors of war, he writes “the world is independent of my will" (Tractatus 6.3.7.3), which echoes Schopenhauer’s theorems.
Wittgenstein suffered from depressive impulses and bore a sense of guilt about his homosexuality. He also contemplated suicide. Three of his brothers had taken their own lives. The fact that Wittgenstein never succumbed to suicide (he died of cancer in 1951) may be due to his channeling of Socrates on 10th January 1917: -
‘If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed,
If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed�
His diary notes and thoughts eventually became the Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus, first published in 1922. This would be Wittgenstein's only work published in his lifetime. The diary notes are a fascinating window into the soul of a tormented genius. Perloff has done an excellent job bringing them to light and putting them in context with a helpful Introduction and Afterward.
I gave the book five stars.
Read
December 9, 2024�15.4.16 We will be at the Front in 8 days. May it be granted to me to put my life in play by receiving a difficult assignment.�
What does it mean to read the work of a philosopher who sought warfare in search of fulfillment? Anyone who enlists to find purpose in life is suspect. It’s as if the Dunning-Kruger effect applies and is stunted, ending in ignorance encouraged by a sense of groupthink, adrenaline, and binaries of “us vs them.� Despite finding purpose in the war, Ludwig Wittgenstein muddies the water of this simplified archetype. For example, the purpose he found in the war was short-lived. The Dunning-Kruger effect wasn’t stunted in Wittgenstein’s case, since after returning from the war, Wittgenstein became deeply depressed. He gave away his inheritance to his siblings. He gave away his Norway cottage to a young local. He went off to become an elementary school teacher and eventually quit.
I can see how someone finds purpose during their participation in combat. It requires one’s entire being and focus. The world is reduced to animalistic strategy. But again, in the case of Wittgenstein, I’ve made things far too simple. While serving in the war, Wittgenstein was obsessed with his ability to “work,� i.e. draft what became the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
�6.12.14 Last night the cannon fire was so close that the ship shook. Worked hard & successfully.�
It isn’t fair to Wittgenstein to claim he lost sight of the nuances of war. He did not default to an animalistic “us vs them� collectivism with his comrades. If anything, as Perloff excellently explains in the introduction, Wittgenstein “neither comments on its [the war’s] politics� nor� speculates which side should or would win.� (p. 14) Perloff compares Wittgenstein’s diaries with other WWI memoirs and finds his to be the antithesis. “Wittgenstein despises his fellow infantrymen.� (p.15)
Rather than committing himself to a fast-tracked collective purpose often afforded by war, Wittgenstein was crafting a logic to understand life on his own terms, all while a passenger to these heightened, primal episodes.
�18.2.15 I am in every respect curious about my future.�
It is fascinating to see the origins and evolution of Wittgenstein’s relationships with GE Moore, John Maynard Keynes, and Bertrand Russell. Of these three, his relationship with GE Moore is likely the only one that lasted. In the introduction to On Certainty, Anscombe and Wright explain that Wittgenstein’s writings in this collected, posthumous volume were inspired by his continued correspondence with Moore and his interest in Moore’s “Proof of the External World� and “A Defense of Common Sense.� His relationship with Bertrand Russell on the other hand must have crushed Wittgenstein. Hermine recalls in her Family Recollections what it was like visiting her brother in Cambridge and meeting Russell before the war. Russell told her, “We expect the next big step in philosophy to be taken by your brother.� (The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein p.18) In her afterword, Perloff explains that Russell’s introduction for the Tractatus
Without having read the Tractatus, I feel this complaint of Russel’s is significant considering the project’s final proposition, �7 About things we cannot speak of we must keep silent." Maybe this slam is one of many influences that inspired Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to veer toward the empirical. If so, he would likely have been saddened by Russell’s response to the Philosophical Investigations. In Russel’s My Philosophical Development he explains, "I have not found in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations anything that seemed to me interesting and I do not understand why a whole school finds important wisdom in its pages."
Theirs is a rather tragic relationship. Wittgenstein did return to teach at Cambridge after the war while Russell was still there. It doesn’t appear Wittgenstein’s decision to fight for the Austria-Hungary (Central Powers) despite already living at Cambridge influenced Russell’s opinions toward Wittgenstein’s work. Although this, and Wittgenstein’s dismissal of openly displaying his homosexuality, does seem to explain why John Maynard Keynes (also homosexual) became cold to Wittgenstein during and after the war. Russell consistently dismisses Wittgenstein’s work on the basis of its character alone, or at least this is how he lets on.
In his diary entries, Wittgenstein alludes to and directly references other influences on his work at the time of writing the Tractatus, some of which include Schopenhauer, Nitzsche, Spinoza , Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy (specifically Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief). A direct example of his passion for Spinoza is evident in his decision to name the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (A Logical Treatise on Philosophy) similarly to Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (A Theological Treatise on Politics).
24.7.16
The world and life are one. [5.621]
The physiological life is naturally not “life.� And neither is the psychological life. Life is the World.
Ethics does not deal with the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.
Ethics and aesthetics are one. [See 6.421]
This sentiment reminds me of something I recently heard David Krakauer (President of the Santa Fe Institute) advocate for during an interview (Brain Inspired podcast episode BI 078, about 9 minutes in). Regarding humankind's ability to understand our cognition, he explained that we are selling ourselves short by contemplating the validity of mind/body dualism. Rather, we should consider a “triadic perspective� of mind/body/environment. He explains, “I don’t think mind emerges from brain. Mind emergently is engineered by an environment.� Comparing this to evolutionary studies, he further explains, “You couldn’t talk about adaptation and fitness without talking about selection.� The interviewer immediately follows this up with its potential connection to Wittgenstein’s work. “Is this like a Wittgensteinian claim? Like you must have someone to speak to or else you can’t think (again referencing the final proposition of the Tractatus)?� Krakauer confirms there is a connection to Wittgenstein’s work.
What does it mean to read the work of a philosopher who sought warfare in search of fulfillment? Anyone who enlists to find purpose in life is suspect. It’s as if the Dunning-Kruger effect applies and is stunted, ending in ignorance encouraged by a sense of groupthink, adrenaline, and binaries of “us vs them.� Despite finding purpose in the war, Ludwig Wittgenstein muddies the water of this simplified archetype. For example, the purpose he found in the war was short-lived. The Dunning-Kruger effect wasn’t stunted in Wittgenstein’s case, since after returning from the war, Wittgenstein became deeply depressed. He gave away his inheritance to his siblings. He gave away his Norway cottage to a young local. He went off to become an elementary school teacher and eventually quit.
I can see how someone finds purpose during their participation in combat. It requires one’s entire being and focus. The world is reduced to animalistic strategy. But again, in the case of Wittgenstein, I’ve made things far too simple. While serving in the war, Wittgenstein was obsessed with his ability to “work,� i.e. draft what became the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
�6.12.14 Last night the cannon fire was so close that the ship shook. Worked hard & successfully.�
It isn’t fair to Wittgenstein to claim he lost sight of the nuances of war. He did not default to an animalistic “us vs them� collectivism with his comrades. If anything, as Perloff excellently explains in the introduction, Wittgenstein “neither comments on its [the war’s] politics� nor� speculates which side should or would win.� (p. 14) Perloff compares Wittgenstein’s diaries with other WWI memoirs and finds his to be the antithesis. “Wittgenstein despises his fellow infantrymen.� (p.15)
Rather than committing himself to a fast-tracked collective purpose often afforded by war, Wittgenstein was crafting a logic to understand life on his own terms, all while a passenger to these heightened, primal episodes.
�18.2.15 I am in every respect curious about my future.�
It is fascinating to see the origins and evolution of Wittgenstein’s relationships with GE Moore, John Maynard Keynes, and Bertrand Russell. Of these three, his relationship with GE Moore is likely the only one that lasted. In the introduction to On Certainty, Anscombe and Wright explain that Wittgenstein’s writings in this collected, posthumous volume were inspired by his continued correspondence with Moore and his interest in Moore’s “Proof of the External World� and “A Defense of Common Sense.� His relationship with Bertrand Russell on the other hand must have crushed Wittgenstein. Hermine recalls in her Family Recollections what it was like visiting her brother in Cambridge and meeting Russell before the war. Russell told her, “We expect the next big step in philosophy to be taken by your brother.� (The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein p.18) In her afterword, Perloff explains that Russell’s introduction for the Tractatus
was not uncritical: ‘The whole subject of ethics,� he [Russell] complained, ‘is placed by Mr. Wittgenstein in the mystical, inexpressible region. Nevertheless he is capable of conveying his ethical opinions.� This rather sardonic comment infuriated Wittgenstein, but he understood how much he owed his first mentor. And further: He owed the awarding of the PhD for the Tractatus to that other Cambridge philosopher, G. E. Moore. (p.202)
Without having read the Tractatus, I feel this complaint of Russel’s is significant considering the project’s final proposition, �7 About things we cannot speak of we must keep silent." Maybe this slam is one of many influences that inspired Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to veer toward the empirical. If so, he would likely have been saddened by Russell’s response to the Philosophical Investigations. In Russel’s My Philosophical Development he explains, "I have not found in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations anything that seemed to me interesting and I do not understand why a whole school finds important wisdom in its pages."
Theirs is a rather tragic relationship. Wittgenstein did return to teach at Cambridge after the war while Russell was still there. It doesn’t appear Wittgenstein’s decision to fight for the Austria-Hungary (Central Powers) despite already living at Cambridge influenced Russell’s opinions toward Wittgenstein’s work. Although this, and Wittgenstein’s dismissal of openly displaying his homosexuality, does seem to explain why John Maynard Keynes (also homosexual) became cold to Wittgenstein during and after the war. Russell consistently dismisses Wittgenstein’s work on the basis of its character alone, or at least this is how he lets on.
In his diary entries, Wittgenstein alludes to and directly references other influences on his work at the time of writing the Tractatus, some of which include Schopenhauer, Nitzsche, Spinoza , Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy (specifically Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief). A direct example of his passion for Spinoza is evident in his decision to name the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (A Logical Treatise on Philosophy) similarly to Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (A Theological Treatise on Politics).
24.7.16
The world and life are one. [5.621]
The physiological life is naturally not “life.� And neither is the psychological life. Life is the World.
Ethics does not deal with the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.
Ethics and aesthetics are one. [See 6.421]
This sentiment reminds me of something I recently heard David Krakauer (President of the Santa Fe Institute) advocate for during an interview (Brain Inspired podcast episode BI 078, about 9 minutes in). Regarding humankind's ability to understand our cognition, he explained that we are selling ourselves short by contemplating the validity of mind/body dualism. Rather, we should consider a “triadic perspective� of mind/body/environment. He explains, “I don’t think mind emerges from brain. Mind emergently is engineered by an environment.� Comparing this to evolutionary studies, he further explains, “You couldn’t talk about adaptation and fitness without talking about selection.� The interviewer immediately follows this up with its potential connection to Wittgenstein’s work. “Is this like a Wittgensteinian claim? Like you must have someone to speak to or else you can’t think (again referencing the final proposition of the Tractatus)?� Krakauer confirms there is a connection to Wittgenstein’s work.
February 10, 2025
An unopened book should be like the moment at the theatre when the curtain rises right before the action takes place. It’s a brief moment of exhilaration and anticipation knowing that something is about to happen, but you have no idea exactly what, even if you’ve read the reviews, heard the raves, read the program and the blurb notes. In that moment, you want to put your faith in whatever happens for the next hour or so. You suspend disbelief. You are free, unknowing. But what form will it take? Will it be a tragedy, a comedy, a troubling existential parable? Then the action starts.
This is a collection of diary entries; a newish side-by-side German-English edition of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notebooks written during three years of WW1. That’s Wittgenstein the 20thC philosopher of language. There must be other entries lost over the years. The bulk of the were written in 1914, and though they go up to 1916, there are few 1916 entries.
But what should I expect of diary entries? I don’t usually like reading this sort of stuff. Like my attendance at the theatre, I skip the preamble drinks and nibbles, known in the bookworld as the introductions, prefaces, preludes, annexe, and whatever new word is conjured by the buzzy world of publishing. I go straight to the first entry. Ludwig is off to his first posting, on a boat on the Vistula, heading to Krakow, then part of the Austro-Hungarian sphere. The Russians were coming.
Ludwig is terse, clear, direct, very ordered and disciplined in the subjects he writes about, however brief.
I don’t really know why anyone writes notebooks. This came up in discussion at dinner when I was asked what I was reading and I was still not at 1915, about half way, since most of the notebooks take place in 1914, much was lost from later years, I believe. One person thought that the diary writer always has an audience in mind. That one day someone will see it and their character will live on through history through such personal thoughts. Another said they wrote in a notebook to work through an issue, usually a personal one, by applying a number of criteria to the matter in an attempt to resolve the emotional state. I said I only wrote rough notes about my work, thoughts on trains and sitting around in waiting rooms or stolen moments from paid work, that might feed into a larger work. No one said anything about gushy, angst-ridden teenage diaries.
What does Ludwig have to say? He has a clear interest in writing about a few things. In more or less order of prevalence these are:
1.Work � ie his philosophical investigations into language that became the Tractacus. Eg: “Worked today. No work today. Some work today.�
2. Erotic drive and masturbation. He thought much about his English friend Paul who he either did or didn’t have a relationship with while in England.
3. The boorish nature of his colleagues.
4. What will be his fate, death in war etc, a reasonable fear to die since his two brothers had committed suicide and his concert pianist brother had lost his arm
5. The pleasantness of one of the officers.
He doesn’t beat around the bush. He writes earnest, kind of neurotic entries about these subjects in 1914. The other element which I find confusing is his constant references to God and Lord and the like, as though he is guided by his spirit towards his fate. But it is unconvincing somehow.
Eventually, by 1916, the only entries that survive are in fact clear, logical passages that look like the Tractacus in the making. And this is where my interest in the book came from. I had quoted someone else’s quotation in an application and resented that I did not use the passage from the original work. I felt like a thief, so I had to find a copy of the book and find this passage:
The limits of my language, mean the limits of my world. 23 May 1915.
The one I really liked was this one a week or so later:
the great problem around which everything I write revolves is: Is there a priori an order in the world, and if so, of what does it consist. You are looking into a fog bank and hence persuade yourself that the goal is near. But the fog lifts and the goal is not yet in sight.
So, you can see why his constant invocation of the lord sounds a weird, unreliable note in the narration.
The entire work felt in the end like another variation of literature; a strange first-person narrative featuring real events, prepared though a neurotic philosopher’s voice and his peccadillos.
This is a collection of diary entries; a newish side-by-side German-English edition of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notebooks written during three years of WW1. That’s Wittgenstein the 20thC philosopher of language. There must be other entries lost over the years. The bulk of the were written in 1914, and though they go up to 1916, there are few 1916 entries.
But what should I expect of diary entries? I don’t usually like reading this sort of stuff. Like my attendance at the theatre, I skip the preamble drinks and nibbles, known in the bookworld as the introductions, prefaces, preludes, annexe, and whatever new word is conjured by the buzzy world of publishing. I go straight to the first entry. Ludwig is off to his first posting, on a boat on the Vistula, heading to Krakow, then part of the Austro-Hungarian sphere. The Russians were coming.
Ludwig is terse, clear, direct, very ordered and disciplined in the subjects he writes about, however brief.
I don’t really know why anyone writes notebooks. This came up in discussion at dinner when I was asked what I was reading and I was still not at 1915, about half way, since most of the notebooks take place in 1914, much was lost from later years, I believe. One person thought that the diary writer always has an audience in mind. That one day someone will see it and their character will live on through history through such personal thoughts. Another said they wrote in a notebook to work through an issue, usually a personal one, by applying a number of criteria to the matter in an attempt to resolve the emotional state. I said I only wrote rough notes about my work, thoughts on trains and sitting around in waiting rooms or stolen moments from paid work, that might feed into a larger work. No one said anything about gushy, angst-ridden teenage diaries.
What does Ludwig have to say? He has a clear interest in writing about a few things. In more or less order of prevalence these are:
1.Work � ie his philosophical investigations into language that became the Tractacus. Eg: “Worked today. No work today. Some work today.�
2. Erotic drive and masturbation. He thought much about his English friend Paul who he either did or didn’t have a relationship with while in England.
3. The boorish nature of his colleagues.
4. What will be his fate, death in war etc, a reasonable fear to die since his two brothers had committed suicide and his concert pianist brother had lost his arm
5. The pleasantness of one of the officers.
He doesn’t beat around the bush. He writes earnest, kind of neurotic entries about these subjects in 1914. The other element which I find confusing is his constant references to God and Lord and the like, as though he is guided by his spirit towards his fate. But it is unconvincing somehow.
Eventually, by 1916, the only entries that survive are in fact clear, logical passages that look like the Tractacus in the making. And this is where my interest in the book came from. I had quoted someone else’s quotation in an application and resented that I did not use the passage from the original work. I felt like a thief, so I had to find a copy of the book and find this passage:
The limits of my language, mean the limits of my world. 23 May 1915.
The one I really liked was this one a week or so later:
the great problem around which everything I write revolves is: Is there a priori an order in the world, and if so, of what does it consist. You are looking into a fog bank and hence persuade yourself that the goal is near. But the fog lifts and the goal is not yet in sight.
So, you can see why his constant invocation of the lord sounds a weird, unreliable note in the narration.
The entire work felt in the end like another variation of literature; a strange first-person narrative featuring real events, prepared though a neurotic philosopher’s voice and his peccadillos.
March 11, 2025
I found the book interesting. Regarding the notebooks MS 101 was good . MS 102 I found lacking and actually felt most of it could of have been edited out as it was often repetitive. MS 103 I found the most interesting. I also found the afterword very interesting and a must read.
July 26, 2023
Coded notebooks written during Witt’s grand time at the Eastern front in WW1 wherein he thinks about logic and does a lot of the five knuckle shuffle, hates his prole comrades that have no trace of humanity, thinks of David Pinsent a lot, and has an intense spiritual crisis that leads the Tractatus going from just a treatise on the foundations of logic correcting his mentors, Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege, to a meditation on ethics, aesthetics, and the meaning of life and the world. Admittedly, most of the notebooks are rather boring: it’s a lot of Witt complaining about his dreadful prole comrades being mean bullies to him, wanking, and trying to work and not being able to (and having the melodramatic refrain of WILL I EVER WORK AGAIN!?) I think most of the interest in these notebooks will be for Witt scholars and completionists. However, I do think that Perloff makes a decent argument in the intro and afterword that many Witt scholars and such have tried to downplay his troubled relation to homosexuality � in these notebooks it is undoubtedly present and a driving force of his thought in trying to attain a Spinozist-Schopenhauerian kind of stoic / ascetic life, and failing to do so again and again. Really to get the full effect it’d be better to pair this with the recto side of philosophy, to understand how his life and his work were merged at this time. I was more interested when Perloff brings in some of the philosophical notes, mostly in Notebook 3, when apparently his private thoughts begin aligning with his philosophical ones. A lot of the interest in the earlier notebooks pertain to how Witt is trying to formulate an ideal ethical life to attain, very much in a Spinozist sense, but constantly failing to do so. It is in Notebook 3 where his work really begins to coalesce into the full embryo of the Tractatus, when he begins to formulate many of the poetic and profound lines that Witt is studied for. But, getting there can be a little like trying to get through a whining boujie Viennese kid going through an immense spiritual crisis only to come out the other side with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The importance of the private coded notebooks lies entirely in how Witt deals with his spiritual crisis, but I just can’t help feeling that this should’ve just been published in a new edition alongside the philosophical side. Without the context of the work in logic, and eventually ethics and aesthetics, that Witt was doing, the notebooks themselves don’t feel that important. I understand how Perloff attaches so much importance to them, and does a good job at really adding some stake to the argument for their publication in the afterword, but overall, I would only check these out if you are going to read the philosophical side of the 1914-1916 notebooks as well. That being said, I don’t think these notebooks are exactly /useless/, Witt really does come out with some incredible ideas and thoughts, it’s just that most of the best stuff was in the philosophical side where he was actually doing philosophy, thinking about these problems in logic and so on. Here, he’s just kinda moaning about his life and hoping God protects him from the swinish proles surrounding him. It’s a little laughable at times, despite him being one of my favourite philosophers, it’s just a little laughable this really uppity boujie kid melodramatically going off in his notebooks.
Yet, he’ll give you a banger like this:
“What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
I know that this world exists.
That I am placed in it like an eye in its visual field.
That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning.
That this meaning does not lie in it but outside it.
That life is the world.
That my will penetrates the world.
That my will is good or evil.
That therefore good and evil are somehow connected with the world.
The meaning of life, i.e., the meaning of the world, we can call God.
And to that meaning we can connect the image of God as a father.
To pray is to think about the meaning of life.
I cannot bend the happenings in the world to my will; I am completely powerless.
I can only make myself independent of the world � and so in a certain sense master it � by renouncing any influence on events.� p. 177
Yet, I find it interesting that this comes from the philosophical side. I get why Perloff felt the need to add these moments when it seems like both sides align, but I just don’t think it would’ve been necessary if these notebooks were good in their own right. And they really aren’t. Yet, despite some of the reservations, Perloff did handle the notebooks with a lot of love and care, and they aren’t a very long read anyway, what better way to spend an afternoon with somebody jerkin it and thinking about logic??
Yet, he’ll give you a banger like this:
“What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
I know that this world exists.
That I am placed in it like an eye in its visual field.
That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning.
That this meaning does not lie in it but outside it.
That life is the world.
That my will penetrates the world.
That my will is good or evil.
That therefore good and evil are somehow connected with the world.
The meaning of life, i.e., the meaning of the world, we can call God.
And to that meaning we can connect the image of God as a father.
To pray is to think about the meaning of life.
I cannot bend the happenings in the world to my will; I am completely powerless.
I can only make myself independent of the world � and so in a certain sense master it � by renouncing any influence on events.� p. 177
Yet, I find it interesting that this comes from the philosophical side. I get why Perloff felt the need to add these moments when it seems like both sides align, but I just don’t think it would’ve been necessary if these notebooks were good in their own right. And they really aren’t. Yet, despite some of the reservations, Perloff did handle the notebooks with a lot of love and care, and they aren’t a very long read anyway, what better way to spend an afternoon with somebody jerkin it and thinking about logic??
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