JOLLY DAYS

Ludwig Speaks To Himself

Wittgenstein, that idolator of genius — as he conceived genius — is described by Stuart Hampshire:

There is a sense in which Wittgenstein pictured philosophy as a very particular kind of talking to oneself, whether in lectures or among friends or in a manuscript journal. The mode is confessional, and the genre was established by Saint Augustine talking to himself about time and personal identity.

Hampshire says that Wittgenstein felt genius was expressed in works that bore no “marks of contrivance” — a phrase from Kant; by contrast, mere talent always betrays itself in obvious manifestations of contrivance, thought Ludwig.

Hampshire relates the story of Walter Pater, who, like Wittgenstein, believed in the interior monologue as a philosophical wellspring; Pater asked at the conclusion of a lecture if his audience had heard his lecture all right. Oscar Wilde was at the lecture and replied, “We overheard you, Master.”