A Philosopher Is a Citizen of No Community
I recently fell for an AI-generated movie poster that advertised an upcoming blockbuster by Christopher Nolan, starring Hugh Laurie as "Wittgenstein". Nolan's recent film, Oppenheimer, made quite an impression on me, which is why I became quite excited, only to be deeply disappointed soon after.
However, while searching online for this non-existent blockbuster, I stumbled upon another movie called Wittgenstein that had already been released in 2013. Well, calling it a movie might be somewhat of a stretch. It feels more like a super-low-budget amateur project shot in someone's garage. Nevertheless, much of the dialogue in the film originates from the man himself, so there is some value in watching this if you’re really into Wittgenstein. Anyone else will surely die of boredom.
I'll briefly share my personal highlight from this film, which is linked to Wittgenstein's famous quote: "The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher."
You may have noticed that the title of this blog post slightly differs, simply to point out that his non-citizenship extended far beyond mere ideas. Wittgenstein never became a permanent member of any community, whether social or professional. He was always on the run from the world and especially from himself.
Deep depression was a common affliction in his family and three of his four brothers committed suicide. Wittgenstein himself contemplated it numerous times throughout his life, but fortunately for us, never went through with it.
One of his main coping strategies was romanticising the idea of travelling to faraway places and doing very different things, in a desperate attempt to become someone completely different. However, regardless of where he went or what he tried, he only ever rediscovered his old self, the one who is never truly at home anywhere, least of all within himself.
The following quote from the movie's final scene describes his dilemma perfectly, and since it also strongly resonates with me (and perhaps some readers), I’d like to share it here:
There was once a young man who dreamed of reducing the world to pure logic. Because he was a very clever young man, he actually managed to do it. When he’d finished his work, he stood back and admired it. It was beautiful.
A world purged of imperfection and indeterminacy. Countless acres of gleaming ice stretching to the horizon. So the clever young man looked around the world he created and decided to explore it. He took one step forward and fell flat on his back.
You see, he’d forgotten about friction. The ice was smooth and level and stainless. But you couldn’t walk there. So the clever young man sat down and wept bitter tears.
But as he grew into a wise old man, he came to understand that roughness and ambiguity aren’t imperfections, they’re what make the world turn. He wanted to run and dance. And the words and things scattered upon the ground were all battered and tarnished and ambiguous.
The wise old man saw that that was the way things were. But something in him was still homesick for the ice, where everything was radiant and absolute and relentless. Though he had come to like the idea of the rough ground, he couldn’t bring himself to live there.
So now he was marooned between earth and ice, at home in neither. And this was the cause of all his grief.
In this spirit, don’t overthink too much and try to live in the moment, ideally right here and now.
PS: In case you're wondering, what does Wittgenstein have to do with computers? Well, quite a lot actually, but I'll get into this in another post.