Élise Marrou, a former student of the École normale supérieure (Ulm), agrégée in philosophy, author of a doctoral thesis on the persistence of the problem of solipsism in Wittgenstein’s thought, and assistant professor (maître de conférences) at Sorbonne university, did not expect to confront the philosopher’s wartime reflections quite so literally. Trapped for several days in the United Arab Emirates amid a sudden regional crisis, she was among roughly 300 passengers awaiting evacuation under tense and uncertain conditions, before the French embassy welcomed them, the Air and Space Force organized the evacuation, and the base at Istres under Colonel Estève, with the help of the SUAD university.

How does this frightening experience in the Emirates shed light on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections in his World War I notebooks?

EM: In a way, it was Wittgenstein’s war notebooks that helped me, if not to overcome my fear, then at least to find ways to resist panic during the nearly week-long exposure to missile and drone attacks that took place day and night. I would like to point out from the outset that in the reflections that follow, I am well aware that this period was very brief (five days and five nights) and much more limited than the exposure experienced by most of the people who are victims of this war today. Indeed, in his notebooks written during the First World War, particularly from 1916 onwards when, at his request, he was sent to the front, Wittgenstein’s thoughts changed in tone: his writing most often reflected thoughts drawn from his readings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. They focus on the status of ethics as a condition of the world and on the subject as the bearer of values. For the Viennese philosopher, thought provokes a gradual and profound ethical transformation in us, breaking with the common hierarchy of goods and the common distinction between means and ends. It is a process of liberation that clarifies what we do and thereby charts the path we follow. For the author of Investigations, entering into philosophy is not the result of a decision, but of coming up against a problem and the need to find a way out of it. Here, finding a way out always means finding a way out through thought and the mind (Geist) (1). When Wittgenstein asks himself, “How can man be happy anyway, since he cannot ward off the misery of the world?”, he answers bluntly: “Precisely through the life of understanding” (Notebooks, August 13, 1916).

Does it test the limits of language, a central theme in Wittgenstein’s work?

EM: These extreme experiences test the limits of language and those of the world insofar as it redefines them. Let’s start with the limits of the world. For Wittgenstein, the subject is a subject of will insofar as it is the bearer of values “that make the world so to speak wax and wane, as a whole, as if by accession or loss of meaning”. Wittgenstein refers to the author of The Brothers Karamazov in his notebooks: “In this sense Dostoievski is right when he says that the man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence. Or again, we could say that the man is fulfilling the purpose of existence who no longer needs to have any purpose except to live. That is to say, the one who is content (befriedigt). The solution to the problem of life is to be seen in the disappearance of this problem.” (Notebooks, July 6, 1916). Making the difficulty disappear certainly does not mean that the rough edges of existence have been wiped out. As Wittgenstein wrote in his Notebooks the following day, clarity is characterized precisely by the impossibility of formulating the meaning that has just been accessed. The author of the Tractatus also returned to this same formula in 1937: “The solution to the problem you see in life is a way of living that makes the problem disappear. That life is problematic means that your life is not in accord with the form of living. You must then change your life, and if it is in accord with such a form, what is problematic will disappear” (Culture and Value). This disappearance of difficulty is linked to living in the present, which for Wittgenstein is not a temporal determination in contrast or opposition to the past or the future, but a way of living “without fear and hope” (Notebooks, July 14, 1916): “Death is not an event in life. It is not a fact of the world. If by eternity is understood not infinite duration, but non-temporality, then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present” (2) (Notebooks, July 8, 1916). While this treatment of death in the Tractatus is also irresistibly reminiscent of Spinoza’s Ethics (IV, LXVII), it is not only ethics that gives us this insight, but thought itself “which, so to speak, rises in its flight above the world and leaves it as it is—considering it from above, in flight”. As for the limits of language, it is clear that during wartime experiences, what we say is adjusted to imminent and medium-term threats. The meaning of what we express goes far beyond the limits of what is expressed by words. It largely depends on gestures of solidarity, on the thousand and one ways in which we express our support for others and are supported by others (and, conversely, endangered or distressed by others or neutralized by their indifference). These experiences obviously also challenge these limits, insofar as they make us experience the limits of meaning itself, not to make us aware of the absurdity and nonsense that are already sufficiently obvious, but in order to maintain and retrace them constantly. More than a recognition of the ineffability or powerlessness of our words, these experiences force us to chip away at the excess and absurdity with the means at our disposal in order to regain meaning and produce it (even if the result may seem insignificant).

Can writing during a crisis, as in Wittgenstein’s case, serve to discipline one’s emotions?

EM: Writing can certainly help to discipline one’s emotions, but talking about them aloud can do the same, at least in the heat of the moment and when faced with danger. The experience of extreme terror seems to me to be both a solipsistic experience in the radical sense that it cannot be shared (each person experiences it in an extremely idiosyncratic way and seeks at every moment to adjust to the emotions that overwhelm them) and the experience of a constant search for shared and collective paths where a particularly strong solidarity prevails.

Does it confirm Wittgenstein’s distinction between facts and values?

EM: Absolutely, insofar as what happens and what we witness factually seems devoid of any ethical value, unlike the decisions we make. As we have already said, Wittgenstein understands will to mean that by which the subject is the bearer of values. It is in this respect that, for him, “ethics must be a condition of the world.” While there is no doubt that “ethics has nothing to do with punishment or reward” and that “if there must be any kind of ethical punishment and reward, these must be involved in the action itself ” (TLP 6.422), it is difficult not to see here an echo of the last proposition of Spinoza’s Ethics: “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself” (V, 42). I believe that for Wittgenstein, ethics cannot be expressed, not in the sense that extreme experiences would show us anything that exceeds the limits of meaning and what we can say about it, but rather that “simply, the happy life is good, and the unhappy life is bad… the happy life seems to be justified, of itself, it seems that is the only right life” (Notebooks, July 30, 1916). Paradoxically, this sense of rightness and truth to oneself can only be acquired by learning this balance in a form of imbalance (or confidence based on fundamental doubt). Will can only operate and become effective if we recognize this gap between what I am and what I should be. Wittgenstein draws our attention to the idea that the reasons for acting (or refraining from acting) cannot be reduced to a series of antecedent natural causes. As such, they are neither purely intellectual nor exclusively voluntary.

Does an experience of vulnerability reinforce our awareness of human fragility?

EM: On this point, I am convinced by the distinction proposed by Jean-Louis Chrétien on the first page of his essay Fragilité: vulnerable is “that which can be hurt, i.e., damaged by an external force,” while fragile, like glass, is “that which can be broken” and “can be used to describe inanimate beings.” In this type of extreme experience, vulnerability and fragility constantly go hand in hand, and refer to a possibility that is inherent in us and that is suddenly and fully revealed. We suddenly realize that this simple possibility has become reality.

Can a personal ordeal transform the way we read the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus?

EM: I have no doubt that such an extreme experience can transform one’s reading of such a fundamental philosophical work. But for my part, this experience has rather confirmed my own reading of the Tractatus and the Investigations. As the Viennese philosopher wrote to Ludwig von Ficker, the limits of ethics are drawn in the Tractatus “from within.” My way of understanding this internal delineation is to emphasize that thought, understood in a very broad sense, colors each of our actions. Conversely, to act with full knowledge of the facts is to know the reasons why I acted in this way and not another. I am therefore free, “not in spite of or on the hither side of these motivations, but by means of them,” as Merleau-Ponty wrote in the last lines of Phenomenology of Perception. It is in this sense, in my opinion, that our commitments support our power to be and our capacity to act.

Notes: (1) For example, Private notebooks: “I constantly repeat Tolstoy’s words to myself: Man is helpless in the flesh, but free in the spirit. May the spirit be within me.” Three days later, he writes: “We are close to the enemy. I am in good spirits; I have returned to work. Currently, it is when I am peeling potatoes that I can work best. I volunteer for this task. For me, it is the equivalent of what cutting glass was for Spinoza.” (Private Notebook, September 15, 1914)

(2) See also this remark from the Cambridge Notebooks and Skjolden: “We usually imagine eternity (of reward and punishment) as an endless duration. But we could just as well imagine it as an instant. For in an instant, we can experience all terrors and all joys. When you want to imagine hell, you don’t need to think of endless torments. I should rather say: do you know what inexpressible cruelty man is capable of? Just think about it and you will know what hell is, even though it is not a question of duration at all.”

See also: *Dialogue avec Christiane Chauviré *Ludwig Wittgenstein, homme des Lumières

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