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I am delighted and encouraged that Christopher Pincock agrees with the main thrust of my essay, “Russell and Wittgenstein: A Study in Civility and Arrogance.” Still, respecting the withdrawal of Waismann’s book from Oxford Press in the late 1930s, I think Pincock’s comments may stand in need of correction or, perhaps, amplification. On the issue of Wittgenstein’s negative influence on Russell, however, there is certainly some justice in his rejection of what may be my overreliance on Russell’s almost certainly exaggerated claim that due to Wittgenstein’s criticisms he “could not hope ever again to do fundamental work in philosophy.” I probably should have emphasized that Russell felt that he was incapable of serious technical philosophical work and not that he was in fact incapable of it, although he still came to devote much of his time to political and social matters rather than to technical philosophy after his encounter with Wittgenstein. Still, as usual, there is more to be said. Pincock quotes Gordon Baker’s comment that a German language version of Waismann’s book was “scuppered” by the German invasion of Holland, while “for unknown reasons the scheme for publishing the English version was aborted [it eventually appeared, much emended, as The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy,1 in 1965].” Pincock adds that he knows of no evidence that Wittgenstein’s “misgivings” caused this failure to publish. However, we do have the following reports about the publication of the book. First, Rom Harre, editor of Principles, writes in its preface: The original version of this book was written and prepared for publication before the Second World War, but was withdrawn by Waismann on the eve of publication. Thereafter he worked over and over the galleys adding to and developing the material, and compiling hundreds of sheets of inserts. (p. xii) And Marie McGinn writes in her review of the Baker-edited The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle: Waismann eventually conceded that the whole [collaborative] scheme was unworkable [because at each meeting, Wittgenstein would passionately demolish ideas he had expressed at the previous meeting], and he and Schlick persuaded Wittgenstein to abandon the idea of co-authorship and authorize the two of them to write the text. After Schlick’s murder in June 1936, Waismann felt he owed it to his former mentor to see the project through to completion, although it seems clear that Wittgenstein became increasingly hostile to Waismann’s use of his ideas. The hostility is not altogether impossible to understand. The thoughts that Wittgenstein expresses in 'Dictation for Schlick’ are ones that form the basis of many of the themes of the Philosophical Investigations, and it must have been extremely difficult to watch someone else give a presentation of them in which they can still be recognized but in which they have also been completely transformed. Gordon Baker concedes that Waismann is almost certainly one of the people Wittgenstein has in mind when he speaks, in the preface to the Investigations, of his ideas being “variously misunderstood, more or less mangled or watered down”. In the circumstances, it may seem an act of exceptional generosity by Baker – prompted in part, perhaps, by the poignant story of Waismann’s life – to suggest that we hear Wittgenstein’s voice in Waismann’s text.2 So we do seem indeed to know the reason why the book, which was already in galley proofs and so already, expensively, set in type, was withdrawn: Waismann withdrew it. We also have some evidence as to why Waismann might have withdrawn it. Moreover, Waismann continued vigorous philosophical publication until his death in 1959, while at the same time working away at the galleys but making no attempt to publish it, which he easily could have done. In the 1970s, I was told by a scholar in a position to be quite sure about it that Wittgenstein demanded that Waismann withdraw the book from publication. Although this individual did not purport to say this in confidence, I am unable now to get permission to identify him. Russell’s case is more complex. Respecting Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript,3 its editor, Elizabeth Ramsden Eames, comments: It is strange that Russell, who seldom retreated from recounting his own failures or faults, should have not reported the fact that he had written a large part of a major work on the theory of knowledge which had been intended as his first important philosophical work after Principia Mathematica and which he was forced to abandon under circumstances which constituted an “event of first-rate importance in my life.” In fact, the existence of the partial book manuscript was not known until the Bertrand Russell papers were catalogued in 1967, prior to their sale, and, at that time Russell did not respond to inquiries about it. (ibid., viii) Eames also tells us that Russell “leapt over” the theory of knowledge in the immediately following work that Pincock cites. Respecting “On Scientific Method in Philosophy,” which Russell delivered as a lecture prior to publication in 1914, Eames quotes Russell to Ottoline Morrell: It worries me, because I can’t get interested, or feel that it matters ... It will bring me 20 but it will be a miserable pot boiler. (p. 55) Throughout this period, Eames suggests, Russell’s pressing need to earn what money he can forces him to put together the lectures that become Our Knowledge of the External World, and the three essays that Pincock cites, which she suggests derive from the lectures, and thus also from his financial circumstances. Furthermore, it is not absurd to suppose that Russell regarded all this work to derive from the thinking he had done before Wittgenstein’s criticisms of 1913; Our Knowledge of the External World is commonly thought to have been what Russell intended to write as a part of the 1913 manuscript, had he finished it. In any case, with the exception of “The Relation of Sense Data to Physics,” he may well have thought of this work as popularization. Still, in keeping with his civility and his modesty, Russell had, even before 1913, made it clear to a number of people that he supposed Wittgenstein to be his successor, who would take the next important steps in philosophy. It is surely in keeping with the Socratic tradition that the man who was the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century should have, again in his civility and modesty, underestimated his own achievements and capacities.
Philosophy Department
1 F. Waismann, The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, Rom Harre (ed.). London: Macmillan, 1965. 2 Marie McGinn, “Review of L. Wittgenstein and F. Waismann, The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle,” Notre Dame Phil. Rev., 2004.06.06.
3 Bertrand Russell, Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript, E. R. Eames (ed.) in collaboration with K. Blackwell, London: Routledge, 1984.
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