‘The darkness of this time’: Wittgenstein and the Modern World

Extract

In the preface to the Philosophical Investigations, written in 1945, Wittgenstein remarks that: ‘It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another—but, of course, it is not likely’ (PI, viii). There was quite obviously no question for him of endeavouring to dissipate the darkness of the age itself, but at the most of introducing light into a small number of receptive minds, the existence of which he considered, moreover, as problematical. In a rough draft of the preface to the Philosophical Remarks that he wrote in 1930 he says:

I realize … that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no sympathy for the current of European civilization and do not understand its goals, if it has any. So I am really writing for friends who are scattered throughout the corners of the globe. (CV, 6)