WITTGENSTEIN'S LOFOTEN

In his Vermischte Bemerkungen Wittgenstein said the following: “The proper greeting among philosophers should be: Give yourself time!” While reclining today on a rock in the Lofoten Islands, almost as in David's painting of Madame Recamier, I thought of the implication of Wittgenstein’s statement. I also tried to get a real feel for it. I did. For it struck me that on the level of enunciation, this is obviously a total call for silence. The fact that it is significant for philosophers to give themselves time is equal to saying that what philosophers should do is to keep quiet. As time is an illusion, it never arrives. Hence whatever the philosopher might have to say can never find its proper time. So keep quiet. Write nothing. Say nothing.

On the emotional level Wittgenstein was an optimist. He really thought that he would find another philosopher of his caliber with whom he could engage in that exchange: 'give yourself time.' Listen to that, ‘give yourself time.’ Say it again, ‘give yourself time.’ For all the longing excitement in this statement, and for all my sensing Wittgenstein’s breathing on me as he wants to let me know that he really wanted to say these words, not just put them on paper, the fact is that he never did. He couldn’t find another to say them to. I’m tempted to say that this is his tragedy, but I’m afraid that this is rather the other philosophers’ tragedy. They’ve all gone into the race for words, not to mention the race for getting indexed in this or that academic 4.3 rated solid journal, not to mention also all the required referencing. Footnotes after footnotes after footnotes, all the names must be referenced, for we are a community, and if I don’t reference your name, you will not reference mine, and lo and behold, at the end of the day we won’t get points enough to fulfil the annual quota for what is called 'original research.' 

Wittgenstein was one of a kind on this, and he understood what the illusion of separation is all about: the fear of being separated from your peers, or the loved ones, or your enemies. He spent time in Norway for lengthy months, eating beans and collecting stones. You know, the round things with funny structures in them. He was following the tradition of philosophers before the days of ‘making an impact’ in the world. In the old days philosophers used to write treatises on nature. Without a single reference to other heads. They would walk about in a nice peripatetic fashion, contemplate what they saw and scribble their thoughts on something that was not all glossy paper with a nice picture on the cover. No bullets either filling the content. The formalists of Empedocles’ times had a different notion of what keeping it simple was all about. Oh, the illusion of clarity. Wittgenstein also understood that. 

Nowadays not even the phenomenologists are allowed to just sit and stare, you know, give themselves time, though their discourse tends to be less ‘clear’ than the ones into counting fallacies. And yet, while the phenomenologists can still get away with some circularity, and perhaps even write about roundness, stones, space, and the like, they are not free from referencing, as namedropping itself has become an establishment. Now we have institutions that hire professional work to keep the gates free of sleepwalkers and those who dive their noses into unconsecrated wells, divining.

I like Iamblichus and his adamant pointing out that Plato was not against diviners, creative thinkers, and the likes of Wittgenstein. No. Plato considered the bachoi to be the true philosopher, namely the one who was the torch-bearer and the seer. The bachoi, the philosopher/diviner would drink from the “lake of memory” (see the poems of Parmenides), and then hell would break loose. No logic in sight. Only passion. The only antidote to conformism.

So, while reclining on my stone today, with Wittgenstein urging me on to speak on his behalf, I thought of how lucky we both are. To be free. To be free even of expecting that out here, of all places, we might run into another whom we could greet with the words: 'give yourself time.' For time, as Wittgenstein and I suspect, doesn’t exist. Only stones do.