Authors: Lars Iyer
Time is gathered into itself like a wolf poised to leap upon its prey
, he quotes.
He speaks of a new vocation of philosophy. A
re
vocation of philosophy.
He speaks of philosophy practised
without
philosophy. Philosophy no longer subject to its own law.
He will have to
reawaken
philosophy, he says. He will have to conjure up
all
of its ghosts.
Philosophy must be reborn, he says. But
without itself
—without its substance.
He speaks of the time when we will have joyously forgotten philosophy. Forgotten what philosophy was
for
. A time when we will
play
with philosophy, like gods …
We will not recognise him, after the end of philosophy, he says. We will not recognise each other!
Everything we have known, we will have forgotten. And when we remember it again, it will be in a new way.
You will leave Babylon with joy
, he quotes.
You will be let out of the city in peace
.
After philosophy
, no one will read, Wittgenstein says. And no one will stop reading. It will be impossible to distinguish reading from looking, from glancing, from letting your eyes rest on one sight or another.
After philosophy
, no one will write, he says. And no one will stop writing. The merest gesture will be a kind of writing. A cough. A hairstyle. The flight of birds: all writing.
And
after philosophy
, there will be no more teaching, only learning, he says. No more studying, only encountering. No more classrooms, only walks along the Backs …
Walking home. Okulu ahead of us on the path, massive headphones over his ears. Faint strains of Mozart. A one-man protest against
Cambridge superficiality
.
We
disappoint
Okulu, we know that. He wants something from us.
Seriousness. Depth
. He wants to discuss ideas. But we let him down.
Okulu is like a
reverse missionary
, we agree. Like one of those Anglican priests, come from former colonies to reevangelise us. Only it’s not religion Okulu brings, but
culture
—old culture, high culture. Okulu is a high priest of old culture …
Okulu is a man of taste. Of cultivation. And Okulu
knows
things—about current affairs, about the latest philosophical and scientific theories. But about the
past
, too. He’s been seen in the library, with piles of old hardbacks …
But who needs libraries? Who needs books? We have them on our e-readers. Or rather, we
could have
them. We
could have
anything at all. Everything from the past can be called up in the present. Everything can be here—everything that was ever thought, or written, or composed, or painted. We
can
commune with all the ghosts. We
can
wake up the dead. But who wants to wake up the dead?
Library hardbacks
should
stay closed, their secrets hidden. Their spines should stay turned to us on their shelves. Keep them asleep. We won’t disturb them. They’re not for us, after all. They were not written
with us in mind
.
And they reek of the past. Their pages have the musty smell
of the past. The smell of old forgotten things. Of things that should be forgotten. Sun-browned pages. Date-stamps from decades ago. Annotations in a tiny hand. Underlinings. Whole passages marked in yellow highlighter. Tan-brown stains from coffee and tea. Evidence of squashed insects. Dried-up tear splashes. Curly strands of pubic hair. Traces of wiped blood. Mementos: an old train ticket, a cinema ticket … Old things! Old things!
The old world is passing. Worlds and worlds are vanishing. A whole civilisation—that was once
our
civilisation—sinks into the greeny-black depths of forgetting …
Poor, mournful Okulu of the library stacks … Poor deep-diving Okulu. He, like us, is seeking a past that grows ever more remote. He, like us, is a creature of the upper waters—of the sun-suffused shallows. But he, unlike us, hasn’t forgotten the depths …
Next year, a new crop of students will appear to replace us. Next year, our tutors will already have begun to forget us. Our essays and exam scripts will be shredded and recycled. Our photos will disappear from internal websites. Our academic referees will no longer be sure who we were. We’ll be confused with this person, with that one. And in the end, we’ll be lost in the anonymous crowd of all the students who were ever taught here.
We each bear a trace of every student who ever studied at Cambridge. We are each a ghost of all the other students—students who have been here, and students who have yet to be here. Our lecturers, who will have seen us already, will see us again. We will have been here before, for our lecturers. We will be here again. There is neither end nor beginning.
But with Wittgenstein it is different. We are not nobodies. We are not insignificant. We are at Cambridge for a reason: that’s what his presence helps us to believe. We are here
for him
, just as he is here
for us
. And we are here, Wittgenstein and his men, for the sake of
thought
.
Something is happening. Something is going on that
will not be repeated
.
The
convolutions
of his lectures. How complex his enemy is!, he says. How complex, then, his classes must be!
Is it necessary, in some way, to recapitulate the entire history of philosophy in his lectures?, he wonders. The entire history of philosophical
mistakes
?
Is it necessary to lead his class to the origins of philosophy? Is it necessary to lead us to an
originary philosophical bafflement
?
Katargesis
: written on his blackboard in capital letters. And in small letters, below:
The fulfilment of the Law. Fulfilment
underlined. Then, in still smaller letters:
The fulfilment of philosophy??
Two question marks.
The end of philosophy??? Three
question marks.
What will he say when the last words of philosophy are spoken?, Wittgenstein wonders. What will he say, when the spell of philosophy has been broken?
He’ll say nothing, he says. He’ll open his eyes. He’ll look up at the sky. He’ll laugh.
After philosophy
, thoughts will be common, Wittgenstein says. Thought will belong to all, like the sunlight, like the rain.
After philosophy
, there will be nothing important at all, he says—
everything
will be important.
Everything
will take on significance. The light on a particular afternoon will be as rich as the collected works of Kant.
• • •
To come across philosophy rusting in a field, like an old piece of farm machinery. To chance upon philosophy as one might the fossilised carcass of some great prehistoric beast. That’s what he wants, he says. To
decommission
philosophy. To place it
out of use
, as former terrorists do their weapons …
For two and a half thousand years, philosophy has been turning like a cat, wanting to lie down. Two and a half thousand years of thought seeking rest, seeking sleep, seeking death …
But soon thought will lie down, he says. Soon, philosophy will lie down.
Only at its end will we know what philosophy was, he says. Only at the brink of its cessation will philosophy reveal itself.
On the last day, philosophy will stand silhouetted against non-philosophy. Against the
storms
of non-philosophy.
On the last day, thought will lie down with the opposite of thought. On the last day, thought and the world will be as one.
On the last day,
there will be nothing left to think
. On the last day, thought itself will become redundant.
At the end, after the end, we will use the
Critique of Pure Reason
as a kilo-weight, the
Tractatus
as scrap paper. Our children will doodle on the works of Plato, and make paper boats from the pages of Spinoza. They will fold the
Monadology
into a paper hat …
The end of logic. The end of philosophy.
His head will empty, when it comes, he says. His head will be empty, as our heads are
already
empty.
And philosophy will be revealed as what it is, and what it always was—
nothing
. And logic will have at last
come into its own
—as
nothing
.
The end will see the hollowing-out of philosophy, he says. The
voiding
of logic. Until it becomes the empty shell through which nothingness roars like a distant sea.
Three AM. The hard white light of Accident and Emergency. Guthrie, propped between Ede and I, apparently concussed. Staging the death of Empedocles was bound to have its risks.
An indignant rah, demanding to be attended to
straight away
. A suicidal Sloane, wheeled straight into resus. A Varsity face, moaning loudly, a patch over his right eye. Some rugby beefcake bluelighted in after a drinking game—
it’s not a good night unless you end up in A&E
, he bellows.
EDE (pissed off): I wish he’d fucking shut up—fucking caveman.
Cries as minor fractures are set. As local anaesthetic is injected. Groaning. Wailing. The malty smell of urine.
The doctor shines a light in Guthrie’s eye, and disappears again.
EDE (more pissed off): Fuck this.
We stare at the
no-win, no-fee
solicitors’ notices. At the in-house hospital magazine. At the
ward philosophy
poster—
striving for your health in a holistic way … encompassing your disabilities … understanding your cultural sensitivities
…
EDE (completely pissed off): Let’s just leave him here, for fuck’s sake. He won’t know the difference.
GUTHRIE/EMPEDOCLES:
Can’t you see where you are looking? You see the earth, a pit, and you see only these miserable laws, which are laws of the dead. Don’t you look to the laws of the gods?
We prop Guthrie against the wall. Snatches of Empedocles follow us to the door.
• • •
Out—into the night. The sense of having made the greatest of escapes.
Our friendships are not deep, we agree. We hardly know what friendship means. We happen to come together, that’s all. We coincided, that’s all. We were going in the same direction for a while, and we made the best of it.
Cambridge is only an interlude, we agree. Cambridge is a corridor, a passageway. And we’ve milled about together, waiting for life to begin.
After Cambridge, we’ll fall out of contact. After Cambridge, we’ll unfriend each other on Facebook. After Cambridge, we’ll forget each other’s names. Each other’s voices. After Cambridge, we’ll begin to confuse each other with someone else.
We fell into step with one another for a while, that is all.
We passed the time …
The Snowball.
Ede and I, in our dress suits, knocking on Wittgenstein’s door.
He looks tall when he answers. Neat. No jacket. White shirt. Pleated trousers, worn high on the waist.
How fresh his room seems! His floor—how it shines! I picture myself walking across it in bare feet.
WITTGENSTEIN (smiling): Your ties are all wrong.
He reaches out just as Ede lifts his chin, adjusting the angle of Ede’s bow tie.
How intense he is! As though bow ties were a problem in logic!
WITTGENSTEIN (smiling again): There!
My turn. I look upwards, at the panelling on the ceiling.
WITTGENSTEIN: That’s better. Now, off you go and lose your souls.
Bubble machine and bouncy castle …
Girls in ball gowns, leaping in their tights. Rahs in dinner jackets, jumping in their socks.
And whooping. Everybody whooping. It’s quite the new thing, whooping.
This would be the right moment for a
campus massacre
, we agree.
• • •
Cocaine. Tequila. More cocaine. More tequila. Our noses tingle. Our throats are hoarse from shouting. Our heads are dizzy …
The entertainment arrives: children’s TV presenters, reality TV stars.
Are we all having a good time tonight? Have we all been good boys and girls? Have we written our lists for Santa? Have we gobbled up all the chocolates in our advent calendars?
More cocaine and tequila, to numb the pain. Have we all taken quite enough drugs and alcohol?
Doyle’s come as Bad Santa, and Mulberry, as his demonic elf, with a sack full of laughing gas balloons. We whoop ourselves crazy …
• • •
The park, 3.00 AM. Titmuss, lying in the flowers, chanting quietly. Guthrie, in Doyle’s Santa hat, kebab grease around his mouth. Ede and I on the bench, sharing a bottle of vodka.
EDE: He likes you.
ME: Who?
EDE: Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein likes you.
ME: What do you mean,
likes me
?
EDE: I mean
likes
you, you idiot. It’s obvious.
ME: Fuck off. No way.
EDE: It’s your boyish charm. Your innocence. You really are an innocent, Peters.
ME: There’s no way he likes me.
EDE (sagely, draining the last of the vodka): That’s why he likes you, Peters: because you say things like that.
In my dream, snow falls on Wittgenstein’s sleeping body. Snow covers him, like a crisp white bedroom sheet. But it covers his shoulders and his arms and his head, too.
In my dream, he is stirring, his eyes are opening. His head falls to one side. He’s facing—
me
.
In my dream, his eyes plead. His mouth moves, but I cannot hear what he says.
In my dream, I wipe the snow from his brow. I wipe it from his body.
In my dream, I kneel at his side, like a supplicant.
King Street, then Park Street. Ede and I, a bottle of gin in each pocket.
We’ve outgrown this place, we agree. We’re sick of it. We’ve explored the lanes, we’ve walked the courtyards. We’ve seen behind the high walls and the iron doors.
How many times have we drunk ourselves silly in the
Maypole
? How many times have we scavenged for alcohol after closing time? How many times have we raided the communal kitchens last thing at night? How many times have we pissed in our sinks? How many times have we stepped over vomit? How many times have we done an all-night essay blitz, high on energy drinks and Pro Plus tablets?