Private Notebooks: 1914-1916

Another reviewer has been scandalized to the point of perplexing their wits over Marjorie Perloff's audaciously referring to Wittgenstein as a homosexual—though, on my reading, she really suggests that "queer" would be more appropriate—when such identity, as the reviewer opines, "has never been definitively or directly established[.]" It is not clear to me what Perloff is supposed to be getting away with (a sinister plot to "turn" philosophers gay?) or why it requires so much purported unmasking, but her commentary seems broadly in line with other sources.(One might, in a Wittgensteinian mood, want to probe how we ever "definitively or directly" establish something, and then whether the name of sexuality could really bear a place, or be grammatical, in such a language-game of epistemic immediacy. Wittgenstein's own comments on the differences of aesthetic taste, under which sexuality might fall, and scientific knowledge, from his 1938 Lectures on Aesthetics, would seem to authorize a negative response to the second inquiry, while his biographer Ray Monk, the artist Derek Jarman, and others have spotlighted his queerness as both an invitation and obstacle to interpretation.)In any case, the troubling nature of his sexuality was not a mystery to Wittgenstein himself: one of his notes from a suicide attempt cites his "perverted disposition" as the motivating factor, in light of which it seems (to me, at least) simply foolish, if not actually eroto- or even homo-phobic, to deny or obfuscate that a certain queerness troubled Wittgenstein, deeply and perhaps persistently. Indeed, anyone wanting to understand Ludwig Wittgenstein's personal development, as those reading his Private Notebooks most likely are, would do well to remain alert and alive to his full person, including his apparent dedication to David Pinsent.As for the Private Notebooks themselves: they record a period of intense personal and political drama in which Wittgenstein seems to have found it necessary to work out the one through the other, bizarrely (masochistically?) electing to put himself on the front lines of war (an avant-garde or blockade, a working at the frontier, that seems to parallel Wittgenstein's contemporaneous blocks on thinking and writing at the respective frontiers of thinking and writing). Although initially he repeatedly laments that the military service is interfering with "my work" (i.e., his work on the Tractatus), he does ultimately succeed: as Perloff observes, the Private Notebooks become increasingly suffused with the working hypotheses of the Notebooks, and ultimately, as we know, the Tractatus is published, dedicated to Pinsent. The cross-referencing of these sources is a great credit to Perloff and shows her familiarity with Wittgenstein's work.What external readers can get out of these notebooks is probably an open question, the answer to which depends on their familiarity with Wittgenstein's life and writings and so wide a range of other considerations that a recommendation is probably beside the point: you'll already know if you want to read this. For myself, it would have been enough satisfaction simply to be able to bear some witness to this especially obscure (dare I say queer?) period in the life of a thinker who has so affected me, to observe the cadence in his libidinal and intellectual and daily labors, but the book provides much more than that: the en face German allows one to enjoy the translation even closer to Wittgenstein's hand, while Perloff's bibliographic apparatus guides one out to the wider world of Wittgenstein studies.One personal note, as an avowed Freudian: I found myself much disputatious regarding Perloff's potshot portrayal of Freud as a spout of homophobic repression in Vienna—one might make this charge against certain psychoanalytic institutions, but not Freud who, in point of fact, wrote in the 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality that everyone is capable of making homosexual object-choices (and in fact has made at least one in their unconscious!), and who decades later replied to a concerned American mother of a homosexual that homosexuality was not a disease and no more susceptible of treatment than heterosexuality—and while such portrayal is perhaps nominally informed by Wittgenstein's strong suspicion of references to interiority, Jacques Bouveresse has made a persuasive case in his 1995 book Wittgenstein Reads Freud (https://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Reads-Freud-Jacques-Bouveresse/dp/0691034257) that Wittgenstein is overall sympathetic to the Freudian project, though surely skeptical about a claim to scientific status. (Bouveresse doesn't quite seem to know what to make of this.) Indeed, that Lacan would later call upon topological figures such as the Klein bottle and Mobius strip in order to abjure 'inside/outside' or 'interior/exterior' divisions so as to faithfully redescribe Freud's structures while further de-medicalizing psychoanalysis indicates that Lacan recognized psychoanalysis' place apart from science and that interiority is also a long-standing source of suspicion within psychoanalysis. These shared suspicions should point to a common ground for the development of psychoanalysis and (ordinary language) philosophy which is instead, as so often happens with the gang wars of academia, kept obscure by misplaced hostilities. For those seeking such an entry, the work of Bouveresse and, especially, Maria Balaska's 2019 study Wittgenstein and Lacan at the Limit: Meaning and Astonishment (https://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Lacan-Limit-Meaning-Astonishment/dp/3030169413) are excellent resources.I found the Private Notebooks absorbing and rewarding: a testament and welcome incitement to continue the work of thinking.

Un libro che non può mancare nelle librerie degli appassionati di Wittgenstein. Va sicuramente approcciato dopo aver approfondito altri testi, perché ha contenuti molto frammentati che potrebbero risultare altrimenti incomprensibili.

I love the way this book shows the famous philosopher using everyday language to describe his troubles at the Front--and his love letters from his "beloved" (I strongly disagree that Perloff obscures this fact)--he lived in a period and place deeply repressive of "deviant" sexuality. She writes with "the exile's passion" in gorgeous perky and poignant language. She allows us to follow Wittgenstein in this particular moment or moments--when he perches up on the look out to sea, feeling like a prince. The war brings out his intensive search, and calling upon "the Spirit." These notebooks reveal his inner struggle--and Perloff as translates, one feels, has entered the philosopher's psyche in her enlivened translation--- the bad behavior of his mates in warfare, his continual search for a "solution" until he finds there are only questions, as he is gripped by his mortality, which also brings back his nostalgia for his relationship with David, and his love and joy when he gets a letter from this beloved. It keeps him going. The book comes at a "perfect" historical moment--where we find the turbulence we currently are undergoing was present in the First World War--and in an eerie way, especially when he is in what is now known as "Ukraine" and his fear of invading Russians. In this way, the book gives us a portrait of a eccentric brilliant philosopher in his more personal moments, such as his noting his masturbation "indulgences"--the Vienna of the 19th century still overhangs him...as he struggles to find the "meaning" of life, which turns out to be the "secret" of not knowing.

This is a review for the hardcover version of Private Notebooks: 1914-1916:ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324090804ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324090809𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭: Decent print quality; endnotes and not footnotes; overall [4/5]𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭: Seemingly decent translation, very easy to read [5/5]Super interesting if Wittgenstein the person is what you're looking for. It should be noted that this is a translation of (mostly) the verso pages of the notebooks. "Wittgenstein wrote his "private" notes in code on the left (verso) pages of each notebook and the philosophical entries---an embryo version of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus---uncoded on the right (recto) pages." The translation of the recto pages can be found in Notebooks 1914-1916, trans. G.E. [Elizabeth] M. Anscombe.

If you are looking for interesting biographical details on Wittgensteins life read the several good biographies first. This book is not a big revelation for fans, and I guess I could have done without it.