It has been 100
years since the body of David Hume Pinsent was recovered from Basingstoke Canal
– an event which almost drove one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th
century to suicide. Pinsent was the companion and source of stability for
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Without Pisent’s
presence and support, Wittgenstein’s immensely influential book, Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, might never have existed. When it was eventually published
in 1921, Wittgenstein dedicated it to the memory of Pinsent.
Here the letter
Pinsent’s mother wrote to inform Wittgenstein
of the death of her son, his friend:
‘My dear Mr.
Wittgenstein, I know you will be very grieved to hear the sad news I have to
tell you. My son David was killed while flying on the 8th May. […] He was
perfectly happy when flying, he loved it, and I think during the last months of
his life he was as happy as a man could be. […] I want to tell you how much he
loved you and valued your friendship up to the last. I saw him the day before
he was killed and we talked of you. He spoke of you always with great affection
and regretted that he could not write to you. […] We often talked of you and
hoped to see you as soon as the War is over.’
In the
immediate aftermath of Pinsent’s death, Wittgenstein was depressed to the point
of planning to kill himself somewhere in the mountains in Austria. But at a
railway station near Salzburg he bumped into his uncle Paul, who found him in a
state of anguish, but saved him from the suicide he was planning. Wittgenstein
kept in contact with Pinsent’s family at least until mid-1919, and probably
beyond that.
Quotes from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to
experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration
but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.”
“We feel that even if all possible scientific
questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at
all.”“For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”
“Ethics and aesthetics are one.”
“I give no
sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has
already been thought before me by another.”
“Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything
that can be said can be said clearly.”
“The temporal immortality of the soul of man, that is to say, its eternal
survival also after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this
assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make
it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive forever? Is this eternal
life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in
space and time lies outside space and time.”
“It is not how things are in the world that is
mystical, but that it exists”
“Whereof one
cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”“This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it-or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with
understanding.”
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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