Wittgenstein's visit to Ithaca in 1949: on the importance of details

Abstract

In this paper, which is based on secondary material as well as new and primary material, we present and analyze the visit that philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein undertook to Ithaca, NY in the summer of 1949. During the visit Wittgenstein met with Norman Malcolm, his host, and also with a number of other philosophers. He also participated in the Philosophy Club at Cornell University. Most importantly, we trace and reproduce several of the conversations that Wittgenstein had during meetings and walks. These conversations covered a huge range of topics, from the Mormons and hamburgers to critical philosophical problems. We try to theorize this sprawling empirical material by problematizing the concept of details. We also draw on W.G. Sebald's work in this effort.

Keywords:

• details
• epistemology
• Norman Malcolm
• ontology
• philosophy
• philosophy of language
• Ludwig Wittgenstein

Notes

We want to thank the anonymous reviewers at Distinktion for very useful suggestions for how to improve this article. We also would like to extend a very heartfelt thank you to the many people who have helped us with information and/or with finding information on Wittgenstein's visit to Cornell. A special thanks goes to three people: Sr. Elwyn, William H. Gass, and Ron Hustwit, who all generously gave us valuable information. We are also very grateful to: Randall Collins, Ben Cornwall, Jonathan Black, Naomi Black, Monika Blank (Rockefeller Archive Center), Calum Carmichael, Elaine Engst, Claudia Fuchs, Lars Hertzberg, Glen Hopkins, Carol Kammen, Michael Kelly (Amherst College Archives), Eila Kupias (The Manuscript Collection, The National Library of Finland), Laura Linke (Cornell University Library), Daniel Little, Stanley James O'Connor, Bernt Ősterman, Ruth Reisenberg-Malcolm, Sarah Schnuriger (Special Collections assistant, Washington University), Sydney Shoemaker, Jonathan Smith (archivist at Trinity College Library), Alan Sica, Ilse Somavilla, James D. Wallace, Chelsea Weathers (The Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin), and Nanci Young (college archivist at Smith College). We also gratefully acknowledge permissions of the people mentioned above to cite our correspondence with them and/or our interviews with them.

See Appendix 1 on primary sources on Wittgenstein's Visit to Ithaca in 1949.

Several of these imaginary anecdotes are inspired by Malcolm's Memoir, such as the following:One afternoon when taking our customary walk across the nearby fields, Wittgenstein, Malcolm and I came across a windmill, gently turning in the breeze. W was much impressed by its austere efficiency, and insisted that we inspect its workings more closely. (He never ceased to be an engineer at heart!) Later on, when returning home, W asked Malcolm why a child should not believe that windmills were responsible for PRODUCING the wind? W went on: ‘How could we persuade him otherwise? By reasons given after the fact? Or rather, would we not here find ourselves floundering? All we could do is shew him by means of examples – or perhaps force'. To this Malcolm could only concede defeat. What a remarkable mind W has! (Perhaps I should become a postman). (Plant and Baumann 2011)

Wittgenstein visited the United States in July 1939 for a little more than a week, probably arriving on 17 July and probably leaving on 26 July. The main reason for the trip was that he had to attend a meeting between Nazi officials and the Wittgenstein family, in which money was offered to the Nazis in order that two of Wittgenstein's sisters could remain unharmed in Vienna. During the negotiations to buy Aryan citizenship for the two sisters (which Hitler personally granted), Ludwig and Margarete Wittgenstein had a serious fallout with their brother Paul. For accounts of the negotiations, see Prokop 2003, 224–35; Waugh 2008, 206–52. The only account in which Wittgenstein talks about other things that happened to him is to be found in O.K. Bouwsma's notes from a conversation with Wittgenstein on 16 January 1951:Then he told me about his visit to New York in 1939. The people were awful. Only one person he liked, an Italian boy in Central Park who shined his shoes twice. The boy hoped someday to shine shoes in a better location. He was genuine. W. paid double for his shine. He stayed in a large hotel on Lexington Avenue off from – opposite Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue. He couldn't sleep for the noise, even on the twenty-seventh story. On the last day just before he left he took a taxi to see a doctor in New Jersey. Going through the tunnel the taxi driver shut off the fare meter. It stood at four dollars and W. saw it. The taxi driver stopped just beyond the tunnel and told W. the fare was seven dollars. W. got out, undecided. Then he went up to a policeman standing by and told him what had happened. Should he pay? The policeman went up, seized the driver by the neck, wrenched him out of the cab, and said to W.: Pay him $4.50. He was glad to get on a boat – the Holland-American line – away from America. (Bouwsma 1986, 74)

Wittgenstein liked the hard-boiled detective genre and especially the work of Norbert Davis (1909–1949), whom at one point he wanted to contact. The book by Davis that Wittgenstein liked so much is called Rendezvous with fear (1943; published in the United States as The mouse in the mountain). For Wittgenstein and the detective story, especially Norbert Davis, see Hoffmann 2003

Felix Salzer, a professor of musicology, writes:I recall also that he [Wittgenstein] whistled most brilliantly and expressively. He – in this particular way – went through a lot of his favorite songs by Schubert and Schumann and I accompanied him at the piano as if he were a singer. (Salzer 1965)According to William H. Gass, Wittgenstein did not only use his whistling for musical purposes: ‘He [also] whistled to keep people away' (Gass 2011). Wittgenstein's love of music in general and his sometime fraught relationship with his older brother, Paul – a well-known concert pianist who played with one hand after losing an arm in World war I – is described in Waugh (2008).

For Wittgenstein's preference to eat always the same thing, see Steven Shapin, ‘The philosopher and the chicken' (1998, 21–50).

Thanks to the careful work that has been done over the years on Wittgenstein's manuscripts, it is possible to state with some precision which manuscripts Wittgenstein worked on during the whole year of 1949 and which he therefore may have worked on during his visit to Ithaca. The former include MS 137, MS 138, MS 168, MS 169, MS 170, and MS 171. The ones that Wittgenstein probably worked on while in Ithaca are the last three (MS 169, MS 170, and MS 171). These have been published in Vol. 2 of Wittgenstein's Last writings on the philosophy of psychology and amount to some sixty pages (Wittgenstein 1992, 1–59). The number of pages is small for Wittgenstein, who produced some thirty thousand pages of material between 1929 and 1951 (Malcolm 2001, 84). The reason for the low productivity was presumably that Wittgenstein was sick during much of the time in Ithaca; he also lacked the kind of privacy and solitude that he was used to.

This is according to Fuchs' daughter Claudia Fuchs, who still lives in Ithaca. Wolfgang Fuchs' own memoir of his conversation with Wittgenstein has unfortunately been lost.

As one reviewer pointed out to us, there exist some discrepancies between the information about Wittgenstein that can be found in Black's account and that which has been established in the secondary literature on Wittgenstein.

We have been unable to locate Malcolm's notes or, more generally, his papers.

We have located three accounts, but William Kennick indicates that there are more (Kennick 1993–2008, 41).

One of Kennick's students, James Wallace, recalls the following: Kennick's story of his first encounter with Wittgenstein was vivid. It happened at a philosophy discussion club meeting. There was a scruffly dressed stranger at the meeting, Kennick said. Someone read a paper, and then, during the discussion that followed, Max Black, who was moderating the meeting, turned to the stranger and asked, ‘What do you think, Mr. Wittgenstein?' Wittgenstein first responded by pitching forward and striking is head on the table with a thump. Of course, the students were astounded. This was the first they knew that Wittgenstein was in Ithaca, and Wittgenstein's behavior was unusual to say the least. Wittgenstein remained with his head on the table for several moments but he began to move his hands in the air. Then, he gradually began to talk, and, of course, from that point on he dominated the discussion. (Wallace 2011)

One undergraduate at the time, Stanley James O'Connor, has told us that he once saw Wittgenstein crossing the Quad at Cornell together with Malcolm. Wittgenstein was oddly dressed, ‘like a scout', and had ‘piercing eyes' (O'Connor 2011).

Paul Ziff (1920–2003) received his doctorate in philosophy at Cornell University in 1951.

Joseph Lalumia (1916–1998) received his doctorate in philosophy at Cornell in 1951.

The finding of the tablets upon which the Mormon faith is based at nearby Manchester, New York, could possibly have provided a further impetus to Wittgenstein's interest in the Mormon religion at this time.

See Sterrett (2005) for the links between Wittgenstein's early interest in aeronautics and his work in philosophy.

Wittgenstein famously loved watching popular movies (e.g. Szabados and Stojanova 2011).

The only information we have been able to find about Dr Mooney is a note in Cornell Alumni News from 1942 about the new hires at Cornell's Infirmary and Clinic: ‘Dr. Louise C. Mooney, appointed resident physician at the Infirmary, received the AB at Goucher College and the MD at Wayne University. The last two years she has been resident physician at Cook County Hospital, Chicago, Ill.' (Cornell Alumni News 1942).

Bouwsma's book Wittgenstein: Conversations1949–1951 has an entry dated ‘October 11 [1949]', which should be 19 October (Bouwsma 1986, 45). On 15 October Wittgenstein sent a telegram to Bouwsma with the following text: ‘If convenient to you shall arrive Springfield Monday [17 October] 610 pm train please wire reply – Wittgenstein' (Wittgenstein 1949g).

At another occasion Wittgenstein told Malcolm that these words in the play had made him realize the importance of religion ('for the first time he saw the possibility of religion'; Malcolm 2001, 58–9).

(See Sebald (2001), 71–2).

‘We met with David Wallace in his hotel suite in downtown Cleveland, the day after his reading. He wore a striped mock turtleneck, gray chinos and tan work boots. During the first half of the interview, Wallace spat Kodiak tobacco juice into a small white bucket, with one leg up on the gold and violet couch, then smoked and drank diet cola for the second half. He wore his brown hair parted in the center, which often necessitated brushing it out of his eyes, and had a habit of lightly striking the back of his head with an open palm, a habit which, Wallace noted, descends in a direct line from his father, a philosopher at the University of Illinois Champagne/Urbana; through his father's teacher, Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein's last student; back to Wittgenstein himself.' (Kennedy and Polk 1993)

Rogers Albritton (1923–2002) taught at Cornell in the early 1950s. How Stanley Cavell came to pick up Wittgenstein's mannerisms is less clear. He began to read Wittgenstein on his own in the late 1940s but never met Wittgenstein. In 1953, however, he took part in a discussion group at Harvard on Philosophical investigations, which was led and organized by Paul Ziff (Cavell 2001, 91). Ziff, as earlier mentioned, was a graduate student at Cornell at the time of Wittgenstein's visit in 1949.

There is a vast literature in science studies on field and laboratory sites and their differences. A useful entry to this literature is Kohler (2002).