Ludwig Wittgenstein's Pastoral Theology
To Inhabit the World
About the author: Ed Watson is a PhD candidate at Yale University, focusing on questions of theology and conceptualization. He is currently working on a dissertation exploring the relationships between Christian talk of grace and racial difference.
On the night of Maundy Thursday, 2015—April 2nd, to be precise—I read a letter whose words have reverberated in my mind ever since. Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote this letter to one of his former students, Maurice O'Connor Drury, to counsel him over his decision to train as a psychiatrist. Ever since I first picked up one of Wittgenstein's books, I felt great comfort in his questions. The spirit of his inquiries, the desires and disquiets expressed in them, have resonated with my desires and disquiets. Reading him set in motion the drive of my thinking, similar to a deep conversation with a close and caring friend. Indeed, a single parenthetical remark of Wittgenstein's first sparked my interest in Barth. While keeping vigil on one of the holiest nights of the year, I found myself reading something that only a Wittgenstein nerd would read and came across a letter that he had written 72 years earlier to another soul entirely. It spoke directly to my needs at that moment.
Below is a transcription of Wittgenstein's letter to Drury, followed by my reflections.
Here is Wittgenstein's letter in full:
Dear Drury,
I have thought a fair amount about our conversation on Sunday, and I would like to say, or rather not to say but write, a few things about these conversations. Mainly I think this: Don't think about yourself, but about others, e.g. your patients. You said in the Park yesterday that possibly you had made a mistake in having taken up medicine: you immediately added that probably it is wrong to think such a thing at all. I am sure it is. But not because being a doctor you may not go the wrong way, or go to the dogs, but because if you do, this has nothing to do with your choice of profession being a mistake. For what human being can say what would have been the right thing if this is the wrong one? You didn't make a mistake because there was nothing at the time you knew or ought to have known that you overlooked. Only this one could have called making a mistake; and even if you had made a mistake in this sense, this would now have to be regarded as a datum as all the other circumstances inside and outside which you can't alter (control).
The thing now is to live in the world in which you are, not to think or dream about the world you would like to be in. Look at people's sufferings, physical and mental, you have them close at hand, and this ought to be a good remedy for your troubles. Another way is to take a rest whenever you ought to take one and collect yourself. (Not with me because I wouldn't rest you.)
As to religious thoughts I do not think the craving for placidity is religious; I think a religious person regards placidity or peace as a gift from heaven, not as something one ought to hunt after. Look at your patients more closely as human beings in trouble and enjoy more the opportunity you have to say “good night” to so many people. This alone is a gift from heaven which many people would envy you. And this sort of thing ought to heal your frayed soul, I believe. It won't rest it; but when you are healthily tired you can just take a rest. I think in some sense you don't look at people's faces closely enough.
In conversations with me don't so much try to have the conversations which you think would taste well (though you will never get that anyway) but try to have the conversations which will have the pleasentest [sic.] after-taste. It is most important that we should not one day have to tell ourselves that we had wasted the time we were allowed to spend together.
I wish you good thoughts but chiefly good feelings.1
The extent to which Wittgenstein's approach to “mistakes” takes humanity into account struck me (alongside the many times I have read it since) the first time I read it. I tend to assume that if something undesirable happens, it can only be because I made a mistake—and so to place the burden of responsibility for all bad things upon myself. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this can make it harder for me to acknowledge my mistakes when they were indeed mistakes. Faults are much harder to accept when they presuppose an inhuman power, which could, in principle, avoid all negative consequences.
This humanity carries forward into Wittgenstein's consideration of what would be the case if a mistake had been committed—not self-abasement, but acceptance that this has happened and cannot now be changed. This shift motivates not fatalism but realism. Whether one makes a mistake, one must live in the world, not dream about a world that could have been. Dreaming is so often, of course, a good thing. It is a way of thinking beyond one's circumstances to imagine what these circumstances do not allow and then to make this dream real. However, when I dream to avoid reality rather than to inhabit it, I dream away from others, losing them in myself.
I must look to those I am proximate for an anchor amid this dream world. There are risks in how Wittgenstein phrases this—the emphasis on “suffering” can motivate a worldview in which suffering exists for the witness to remind the latter of the world they inhabit or offer service opportunities. The invocation to turn away from self to others can also easily evoke self-denial, which tends to make one's well-being a cause for shame. With these risks noted, the heart of Wittgenstein's words still shines through: to look at those close at hand, see them as human beings, and recognize what it means to be able to say a kind word to someone in their sorrow or joy. In my experience, following this advice in times of self-doubt and crisis has grounded me and made it possible for others to be my ground. It has made possible an unforced gratitude, a sense of sheer awe that I am in this place with this person. And this has indeed been a good remedy for my troubles.
This brings Wittgenstein to religion—the question of peace as a gift. I never fail to be struck by the fact that these are Wittgenstein's words following his claim that peace is a gift from heaven:
"Look at your patients more closely as human beings in trouble and enjoy more the opportunity you have to say 'good night' to so many people. This alone is a gift from heaven which many people would envy you ... I think in some sense you don't look at people's faces closely enough.”
Peace, which cannot be sought, is given in the opportunity to say “good night” to someone they see so well that in saying these simple words: I speak not to an expectation or a performance but to a human being living as I am. I cannot hunt after this peace, which would be to make my neighbor first and foremost the object of my striving, collapsing desire in on itself. I can only enjoy the opportunity to say goodnight and good morning and see others as they deserve to be seen.
Finally, the question of pastoral theology. With figures like Wittgenstein, let alone avowed theologians like Barth, it can be easy to approach the question of “pastoral theology” as if it were an application of their theory or some such thing. There is merit in seeking to “apply” theory; if one reads this letter with Wittgenstein's philosophy in mind, it is easy to see how certain philosophical principles are operative. Nonetheless, the framework of “application” strikes me as a distorting way of asking after someone's pastoral theology. In the matter of living, theory and application do not constitute different levels of existence; rather, the reflective (“theoretical”) and the decisive (“pastoral”) are different expressions of the same spirit in other relations. Wittgenstein's pastoral theology is not a practical application of his thought but a practice of his reflective self-thought in a religious voice when his speaking (or, rather, writing) matters to another. So pastoral theology in our lives is not a matter of theories and applications but of what we say to those who are close at hand—what we say to those in whom our peace is given, as we seek to likewise be a gift of peace to them.
I hope reading this letter and that my reflections on it have been a good use of your time. I share it partly because it has, I believe, impacted my life more than any other piece of writing. Every time I return to it, I am reminded of how fortunate I am to be able to speak kind words to others—and the basis of this gratitude frames the structure of my research, which explores how we can inform each other's possibilities of thought and feel in this speech.
But, I also share this letter because it shows what it means to turn a philosophical and theological temperament to a pastoral end without denying the character of the former or condescending to the latter. In writing these words of religious comfort for this particular moment, Wittgenstein neither removes himself from nor attempts to give an exegesis of his theoretical thought (as if one would need to understand his philosophy to understand his counsel). He speaks words from the ground of his thoughts to someone close at hand. In this, his words evince a way of inhabiting theology and the world together, not acting as though our abstract theological reflections exist in a world other than the one where we are lucky enough to say “good night” to one another.
Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents, 1911–1951 (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 265.
Thank you. Your comments are as helpful as the letter itself. Be blessed.
Thank you for sharing a beautiful and life-giving message to be present today with those around us.