Spengler, Wittgenstein and the Emergence of Language and Thought

Written by: Richard McDonough

I don’t think I have ever invented a line of thinking. I have always taken one over from someone else. I have straightaway seized upon it with enthusiasm for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (19)[1]

Although no one can now deny that the two volumes of Spengler’s Decline of the West (hereafter Decline I and Decline II) had significant influence on Wittgenstein’s philosophy (Von Wright, 1982, 118; Monk 2012, 19, 299, 302-3, 311, 315-7; Haller 2014, Chap. 5; DeAngelis, 2016, etc.), accounts of his influence tend to focus on highly general analogies between the two, e.g., their shared pessimism about modern European and American civilization, their shared distrust of modern science and of the mechanistic views of living organisms, the fact that they share certain concepts like that of family resemblance and physiognomy, etc. Although that is certainly important, it is also important to explore certain specific connections between them, especially when these go very deep and may not be obvious. This paper discusses Wittgenstein’s striking remark at para. 608 of Zettel, hereafter Z608, which, according to most commentators, suggests that the order of language and thought might arise out of physical chaos or nothingness at the neural center of normal language users. In opposition to this orthodox interpretation, the present paper argues that Z608, following Spengler, who is himself influenced by Goethe and Nietzsche, is actually suggesting that the order in language and thought might arise out of the creative chaos at the true center of human life, namely, human history.

§ I discusses Wittgenstein’s basic methodology in his “later philosophy”.[2] § II shows that commentators, almost unanimously, have managed to interpret Z608 precisely backwards as a theory about physical chaos at the neural center while largely downplaying the notion of history in Z608. § III discusses Spengler’s quite different notions of the center, chaos and history in several key passages in Decline. § IV shows that Z608 is actually a very Spenglerian passage that suggests that human language and thought is not produced in the physical brain but rather that these are produced in the “chaos” of life in the true “center” of human life, human history. § V explains why, as Spengler puts it, the experience Wittgenstein expressed in Z608 is in fact the quintessential expression of the kind of “wonder” at the emergence of the cosmos from chaos or nothingness that Plato identifies as the source of philosophy itself.

1. Wittgenstein’s Basic Methodology

We may not advance any kind of theory. … We must do away with all explanation [LW’s emphasis] and description alone must take its place.

Philosophical Investigations (109)

It is natural to philosophers and scholars to speak of a plethora of different philosophical theories, Plato’s theory of the soul, Aristotle’s theory of substance, Kant’s theory of mental activity, Russell’s theory of logical atomism and so on. One of Wittgenstein’s most basic views, and one of the hardest, perhaps because of its simplicity (PI, 129), to understand, is that philosophy, as he understands it, does not state theories about hidden phenomena,

Philosophy simply puts everything before us and neither explains nor deduces anything.—Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden … is of no interest to us. (PI, 126)

Later at PI (425), in words that later became the title of Norman Malcolm’s (1986) book on Wittgenstein’s development, Wittgenstein states that “Nothing is hidden”. Since everything of interest to Wittgenstein’s philosopher lies “open to view” or is “always before one’s eyes” (PI, 91, 126, 129) there is no need to posit hidden causes or mechanisms to explain them. One does not explain the aesthetic properties of the Mona Lisa by looking at Da Vinci’s brain. In order to understand, not explain, those aesthetic properties, one looks at what is “open to view” in the painting itself and in its history (Cf. CV, 25). Similarly, Wittgenstein’s philosopher does not search for new facts, e.g., new facts about the mental faculties or neural mechanisms that allegedly underlie human intelligence, etc., but, rather, attempts to solve problems by “[re]arranging what we have always known,” leading, optimally, to a “perspicuous representation [übersichtliche Darstellung]” of what is already “open to view.”

Wittgenstein’s view that nothing that is of interest to the philosopher is hidden means that he holds that there is a sense in which language and thought do not arise out of anything hidden behind the phenomena. He does, of course, accept that ordinary view that linguistic speakers must normally have brains in good functioning order if they are to speak and think properly (McDonough 1989; 1999; 2016). That is not the issue: “What gives the impression we want to deny anything?” (PI, 305) He just claims that these alleged hidden neural mechanisms are irrelevant to understanding the kind of questions philosophers ask about language and meaning, e.g., questions like, “How does language represent reality?” and “How can one think about what is not the case?” and “How do words refer to things in the world?” Since Wittgenstein holds that language and thought arise out of nothing hidden behind the phenomena, he holds that they must, rather, so to speak, arise out of the human activities that are already “open to view” and that constitute the “real foundations [eigentlichen Grunjdlagen]” of human language. (PI, 129) Thus, for Wittgenstein, the answer to such philosophical questions is always visible in the way words are actually used in concrete linguistic contexts.

Scholars are, therefore, strictly speaking, wrong when they refer to Wittgenstein’s “use-theory” of meaning (Peregrin, 2009). Wittgenstein is not trying to present new theories about meaning or thought. He is rather trying to provide a “perspicuous representation [übersichtliche Darstellung]” of the meaning-phenomena or mental-phenomena that are “always open to view.” He is, in Spengler’s terms (Decline I, Preface to Revised Edition, xiv) attempting to achieve a kind of “overview (überblick)” of linguistic and mental phenomena that enables one to see the way these philosophically interesting words are actually used in human life.

2. Zettel’s Image of the Emergence of Thought and Language from Chaos or Nothing

No supposition seems to me more natural than that there is no process in the brain correlated with associating or with thinking; … I mean this: if I talk or write, there is, I assume, a system of impulses going out from my brain and correlated with my spoken or written thoughts. But why should the system continue further in the direction of the center. Why should this order not proceed, so to speak [sozusagen], out of chaos? The case would be like the following—certain kinds of plants multiply by seed, so that a seed always produces a plant of the same kind as that from which it was produced—but nothing in the seed corresponds to the plant which comes out of it—this can only be done from the history of the seed. So an organism might come into being out of something quite amorphous, as it were, causelessly; and there is no reason why this should not really hold for our thoughts, and hence for our talking and writing [all emphasis LW’s].

Wittgenstein, Zettel (608)

Z608 immediately strikes one as unlike any other passage in Wittgenstein. Note first that there are two different images in Z608, 1.) the image of the emergence of the order of language and thought from chaos at the center and 2.) the emergence of a plant from nothing in the seed. Most commentators have focused on the first of these as if the second is merely a different version of the first. In fact, the organicist imagery of seed and plant in the second part of Z608 introduces new elements not present in the first. Ultimately, however, the two distinct images complement each other. Following the commentators, however, we begin with the interpretation of the first image.

Although Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is usually seen as primarily negative, i.e., knocking down the houses of cards erected by philosophers without providing any positive theory (McGinn, 1984, 1), most commentators, including McGinn, see positive theories about the brain in Z608. McGinn (1984, 2-13, 112-114) and Yami (2005, 179-286) think Z608 suggests that the brains normal people may turn out to be in physical chaos. Scheer (1991, 5-23) thinks Z608 posits causal indeterminism in the brain. Davies (1991, 229-257) and Mills (1993) each think Z608 anticipates recent connectionist theories of brain processing of information. Hark (1995, 113-138) thinks Z608 argues against Köhler’s theory of electric brain fields. These commentators, all presupposing the standard paradigms in contemporary “cognitive science,” hold that the center and chaos mentioned in Z608 are the neural center and neural chaos. All defend versions of the view that Z608 holds that the order of language and thought might arise from physical chaos, of one kind or other, at the neural center. It is quite obvious, however, that this orthodox interpretation cannot be correct. If Z608 is consistent with Wittgenstein’s basic principle that the philosopher must not advance any kind of theory (§ I), it cannot be advancing theories about chaos at the neural center. There must be another interpretation.

In fact, Z608 explicitly denies that there is physical chaos in the brain: “[T]here is … a system of impulses going out from my brain and correlated with my spoken or written thoughts.” Since a “system [LW’s emphasis]” implies order, Z608 does not ascribe chaos to the neural center. But if the chaos referenced by Z608 is not in the neural center, the brain, then where is it?

If one read’s Z608 carefully it becomes apparent that since the system of neural impulses is “moving further in the direction of the center”, and since that system of neural impulses is moving away from the neural center and towards the external world (“going out from my brain and correlated with my spoken or written thoughts”), the center mentioned in Z608 has to be in the external world with the “spoken and written thoughts”! And, in fact, one finds just such a new “center” identified in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. PI (108) explicitly identifies the true center of human language and thought when he contrasts his new “later” view with his earlier view in TLP,

The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole examination around. (One might say: the axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but around the fixed point [Angelpunkt] of our real need.) The philosophy of logic speaks about sentences and words in exactly the sense in which we speak of them in ordinary life …

Whereas Anscombe translates “Angelpunkt” as “fixed point,” it is properly translated as “center point,” the central point around which one uses a compass to draw a circle (Traupman 1991, 17) Thus, PI (108) identifies the “center” of our “real need,” not as the neural center, but as the uses of words in ordinary life! Indeed, nothing could be more foreign to Wittgenstein’s view in PI than the view that language and thought are causally generated at the neural center! Similarly, what could be more obvious than that the Wittgenstein holds that language and thought are centered in ordinary everyday human activities? That is, arguably, Wittgenstein’s main point in PI.

The orthodox interpretation gets Z608 precisely backwards because it assumes, in a sense that Kuhn (1970) would readily understand, the very neural-centered paradigm that Wittgenstein is attacking in his “later” works. Specifically, the orthodox interpretation correctly assumes that the chaos is where the center is but incorrectly assumes its own cognitive science paradigm that the center can be nothing other than the neural center. Thus, the orthodox interpretation of Z608 holds that it must be saying that language and thought arise from physical chaos in the brain, a version of the view that “meanings are ‘in the head’” (Putnam 1975; Devitt 1990). In fact, Z608 is saying that one needs an entirely new paradigm in order to understand the genesis of language and thought, specifically, that language and thought, “so to speak [sozusagen],” arise (but not a new causal theory) out of the “chaos” of activities in everyday human life. Z608 is, in fact, on analogy with the Copernican Revolution in astronomy which reversed ordinary everyday views about where the location of the center of the universe is, is attempting to reverse everyday views about where the center of language and thought is. Z608 proposes something like a “Copernican Revolution” in the understanding of language and thought (McDonough 1989, §III.2), that is, it seeks to replace the orthodox view of contemporary cognitive science that language and intelligence are centered in the brain with the new view that language and intelligence are centered in human activities (human life).

Consider now the second and more neglected image in Z608, the image of plants arising from seeds where “nothing in the seed corresponds to the plant which comes out of it.” Note first that there are two main creation images in ancient cosmology, the emergence of the world from chaos and the emergence of the world from nothingness (Seal and Smith 2021, 5). It is highly significant that both of these ancient images are present in Z608. Wittgenstein uses each to make a specific point. Whereas he uses the image of the emergence of order from chaos at the center to make the crucial point that the true center of language and thought is not the neural center but the “center-point of our real need” in human activities, he uses the second to introduce the idea that since a plant arises out of nothing in the seed it must arise in a very different sense from “the history of the seed”,[3] that is, to introduce the positive idea that the true center of plant life, and, by analogy, human thought and language, is not some material object or mechanism like the brain but is properly located in the history of the organism. Z608’s introduction of this second organic cosmological image introduces several new points.

First, the imagery of a plant emerging from nothing in the seed enables one to specify further Wittgenstein’s notions of the everyday “center-point of our real need” and his notion of “forms of life” (PI, p. 226). That is, it clarifies that both of these notions are actually historicist notions. Indeed, Wittgenstein introduces the notion of a “form of life” at PI (19, 23) and his notion of the “natural history of human beings” just a few passages later at PI (25): “Commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing.” This is substantially the same point made in the second image towards the end of Z608, namely, that one cannot explain the genesis of language by appeal to hidden mental mechanisms or causes. If one wants to understand the genesis of human language and thought “this can only be done from the history of the” human being or of human beings. The real springs of human intelligence are not in brain matter but in the unfolding matters of human history. Wittgenstein here replaces the modern scientistic paradigm of hidden causal explanatory mental mechanisms with the very different paradigm of the unfolding of human language and thought (and human culture) in human history.

Against the background of both of these images, Z608 concludes that “an organism might come into being out of something quite amorphous, as it were, causelessly; and there is no reason why this should not really hold for our thoughts, and hence for our talking and writing.” Z608 is attempting to replace the idea that higher human cultural life is causally centered in their physical brains with the idea that it is descriptively centered in human history!

The orthodox interpretation that Z608 is speculating about the genesis of language and thought from physical chaos at the neural center could not be further from the truth. Z608 is an attempt to replace the oppressive dominant causal-mechanistic paradigm for understanding language and thought with a descriptive historicist paradigm, which means that Wittgenstein’s notions of everyday life and of “forms of life” also have an essential historicist dimension. For Z608, to understand the notions of reasoning, calculating, explaining, seeing, believing, hoping, etc., as parts of “forms of life” is to understand them as part of an unfolding human history.

3. Spengler, the Emergence of Order from Chaos and the Historical Center

Every higher language possesses a number of words such as luck, doom, conjecture, vocation about which there is a veil. … They are symbols, not notions. In them is the center-of-gravity of that world picture that I have called the World-as-history as opposed to the World-as-nature. The Destiny-idea [expressed in these words] demands life experience, not scientific expertise …

Decline of the West I, 117

There is a metaphysical period, originally of a religious and finally of a rationalistic cast — in which thought and life still contain something of chaos, an unexploited fund that enables them effectively to create.

Decline of the West I, 365

As shown in the previous section, the key to interpreting Z608 correctly is to understand its images of the center and of chaos but one must also understand Z608’s emphasis towards the end of the passage on the “history of the seed”. The present section provides a preliminary overview of Spengler’s anticipation of Z608’s organicist and historicist imagery. A more detailed discussion of Z608’s neglected imagery, crucial for grasping his debt to Spengler, of the emergence of an organism from “nothing” in a seed, is discussed in the following section.

First, the two volumes of Decline contain so many references to a “center” that it is impossible to discuss all, or even most, of them here. It is sufficient for present purposes to show that Spengler’s Decline contains important images of the center of human life and of the emergence of order from a creative chaos that, if applied to the reading of Z608, supports a reading of that passage that is the diametrical opposite of the orthodox interpretation.

The first thing one observes about the plethora of uses of the word “center” in Decline is that none of them is a reference to the neural center. None of them understand these images in the same way as the orthodox interpretation of Z608. It is true that some of the references to the “center” in Decline are relatively mundane, e.g., as at Decline (II, 378) where a palace is described as a center of history. However, in a far more philosophically interesting use of this notion, at Decline (I, 23) Spengler remarks that sometimes “the center of gravity of philosophy shifts from the abstract-systematic to the practical-ethical and our western thinkers from Schopenhauer onward turn from the problems of cognition to the problem of life (the will to life, to power, to action.” Similarly, Spengler elsewhere identifies the image of World-as-history rather the image of the World-as-nature as the center-of-gravity of a culture’s world-picture (Decline I, 117). In addition, at Decline (II, 431), in a more metaphysical formulation, Spengler refers to the historical “traditions” of an old monarchy, an old aristocracy, an old polite society that “can become a center that holds together the being-stream of an entire people” (Decline II, 431). And at Decline (II, 445), again using cosmological language, Spengler states that “there are moments – and they indicate the maximum of cosmic flowings – when the individual feels himself identical with Destiny, the center of the world, and his own personality seems to him almost as a covering in which the history of the future is about to clothe itself.” In this passage Spengler identifies the center of the world with the Destiny of a people, indeed, a Destiny that might be realized in a particular individual. Spengler adds on the same page that this kind of individual-identified-with-Destiny can become “the creator of a new life, a spirit-ancestor of a young race.” This leads into Spengler’s image of the role of chaos in the center of human culture, namely, human history.

Spengler was influenced by Nietzsche’s (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Preface, § 5) view that “One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star”. Nietzsche here rejects the common idea that chaos is always negative and bad and holds instead that chaos can be a positive creative factor. Indeed, Nietzsche there claims that one must have internal chaos in order to be creative. Thus, chaos is an essential factor in cosmic evolution. Spengler echoes Nietzsche’s remark in his view that chaos can be “an unexploited fund that enables … thought and life … to create” (Decline I, 365). He continues this theme in another cosmological passage,

The eternal-cosmic pulse has finally overcome the intellectual tensions of a few centuries. In the form of democracy, money has won. … But as soon as it has destroyed the old orders of the Culture, the chaos gives forth a new and overpowering factor that penetrates to the very elementals of Becoming — the Caesar-men. (Decline II, 431)

Fischer (1989, 21) explains that for a “cyclist” like Spengler “The existence of decadence corruption and social chaos portends life as well as death, renewed hope as well as despair. … [S]uch is the nature of life and history.” That is, when most people make judgments about the value of some phenomenon X, they tend to do so from their own local perspective. If they see X as enhancing their own life, it is seen as orderly and good. If they see X as undermining their own life, they see it as chaotic and bad. By contrast, a cyclist like Spengler holds that these seemingly negative aspects of chaos or disorder can be an essential part of the positive creative process in history.

Although one might cite additional passages from Decline, one can already see that if one reads Z608 using the images of the center and chaos found in the preceding passages from Decline one gets an interpretation of Z608 that differs markedly from the orthodox interpretation. For example, if by the center one means “the practical-ethical” and “the problem of life (the will to life, to power, to action,” then Z608’s question why this neural system must continue “further in the direction of the center” is the question whether the orderly physical neural system, which Z608 never denies, can actually reach the real practical center of human actions, which latter mirrors Wittgenstein’s quotation from Goethe’s Faust, Part I, “Im Anfang war die Tat” (CV, 31). And since the chaos referenced in Z608 is clearly where the center is, Z608 is not talking about physical chaos in the brain but rather, following Nietzsche and some passage in Spengler’s Decline, the creative chaos of human life in history.

Further, if, following those passages in Spengler’s Decline that clearly resonate with Z608’s reference to “the history of the seed”, the center is identified as either 1.) “World-history as opposed to the World-as-nature,” or 2.) the historical “traditions” of a culture that “can become the center of the “being-stream of an entire people,” or 3.) a Destiny that can be felt as identical to an individual as the center of the world, then, Z608’s question why the system of neural impulses must continue further in the direction of the center is the question whether the mere physical system of neural impulses can really explain the true center of a human beings in their historical Destiny! Read against this Spenglerian background, Z608 is asking why anyone should think that a mere physical system of neural impulses can really explain anything about “the being-stream” of a person’s or people’s language and thought in human history.

Consider now Spengler’s imagery of chaos, specifically, his remark that chaos can be “an unexploited fund that enables … thought and life … to create” or his remark that chaos can be part of “the eternal-cosmic pulse” that can produce “a new and overpowering factor that penetrates to the very elementals of Becoming — the Caesar-men.” In these passages Spengler is not talking about physical chaos in the brain but a kind of cosmic chaos that can generate the great history-transforming individuals. If these images of chaos are taken as a guide, then when Z608 asks why the order of language and thought cannot proceed out of chaos, it is not asking why they cannot proceed from physical chaos in the brain but why they cannot arise from the kind of transformative “chaos” in human history.

Combining these two points, the first about Spengler’s several images of the center and the second about his several images of chaos, one can say that if Z608 is inspired by this kind of imagery in Decline, then it is not suggesting that the order or language and thought might arise from physical chaos at the center of the human brain as the vision of what Spengler calls the World-as-nature would have it, but rather is suggesting that language and thought might arise out of creative chaos at the true centre of human life, namely the “being-stream” or Destiny-stream in human history that produces great transformative individuals. The imagery in Z608 is not taken from the natural sciences. The imagery in Z608 is, in the first instance, cosmological, and, in the second, existential insofar as the true being of humans resides in their history and Destiny. In the following section, the new insights that derive from the generally neglected second image in Z608, the non-causal arising of a living organism from nothing in the seed but rather in “the history of the seed,” are discussed in more detail.

4. Spengler’s Image of the Emergence of the Prime Phenomenon from Nothing

Culture is the prime phenomenon [Spengler’s emphasis] of all past and future human history. The deep and scarcely appreciated idea of Goethe which he discovered in his “living-nature” … we shall here apply … to all the formations of man’s history whether fully matured, cut off in the prime, half opened or stifled in the seed. The highest to which man can attain, is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder let him be content … Nothing higher can it give him and nothing further should he seek behind it [emphasis added]; here is the limit.

Spengler, Decline of the West I, 105

Although most Wittgenstein scholars have focused on the first image in Z608, the emergence of order from chaos at the center, apparently regarding the second image, the emergence of an organism from nothing in the seed, as a mere variant on he first, the second image adds entirely new elements to the passage. For simplicity of exposition, call these “the first image” and “the second image.” In fact, the two images complement each other and one must deal with both to get the full (Spenglerian) anticipation of Z608.

After completing the discussion of the first image in the first part of the passage, Z608 introduces the second image with the words, “the case would be like the following”. There is therefore reason to believe that Wittgenstein saw the two images as roughly equivalent at the time. This is not entirely surprising because he explicitly states that “Each of the sentences I write is trying to say … the same thing over and over again; it is as though they were views of one object from different angles” (CV, 7). If it is true, then the various points made both in PI and in Z, even when they seem to be different, should be trying to make the same point over and over again from different perspectives.

First, if the first and second images in Z608 are, as Z608 itself suggests, making the same point from different perspectives, then, even though second image does not explicitly mention a center one should be able to identify one. And, in fact, the analogy is clearly between the material neural center of the human cranium and the material genetic center of the seed. Whereas the first image alludes to the emergence of intelligence from chaos at the neural center, the second image alludes to the emergence of a living organism from nothing at the material center of a seed.

One might claim, however, that the second image in Z608 is entirely new and not an attempt to make Wittgenstein’s same point over and over again. In fact, the second image in Z608, the emergence of order from nothing, is not new in Wittgenstein’s writings but is present at least as far back the early pages of PI.

Wittgenstein’s well-known view at PI (126) is that there is “nothing hidden” behind higher human cultural phenomena like language and thought. Similarly, Spengler holds that there is nothing material behind higher cultural phenomena (“nothing further should he seek behind [cultural phenomena]”), that is, no material mechanism or causal processes that produces them. Thus, Spengler also holds that these phenomena, in that sense, arise out nothing material in the human being that produce them. Anticipating Wittgenstein, Spengler holds that such higher cultural phenomena are not produced by material mechanisms at the neural center.

What is new in Z608’s second image is that immediately after denying that the order in a living organism arises from nothing material in the seed, Z608 indicates where the emergence of order from a seed actually arises, namely, in the history of the organism. This too, also employing the seed-analogy, is anticipated by Spengler (See the epigraph above from Decline I, 105). That is, Wittgenstein’s view that the order in an organism is exclusively manifested, not in material mechanisms hidden behind the organism’s exterior, but exclusively in the history of the organism’s development from seed to plant, that is in its historical development over time, is perfectly anticipated in Spengler. Whereas Z608’s first image is predominately negative insofar as it suggests that intelligence does not emerge from any mechanical or material order at the neural center, Z608’s second image provides a positive alternative way to construe the emergence of order in an organism, a positive historicist paradigm that is anticipated in Spengler. Indeed, although Z608’s first image is anticipated by Spengler, it is really Z608’s second image, with its new positive historicist paradigm, that reveals that Z608 is a very Spenglerian passage. There is, however, one additional crucial Spenglerian point to be made about Z608.

5. Spengler’s Wonder at the Emergence of the “Prime Phenomenon” from Nothing

The sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy… has no other origin, …

Plato, Theaetetus (155d)

Whereas most contemporary scholars have understood Z608 to be making bizarre (literally impossible) theories about the causal basis (or lack thereof) of human intelligence at the neural center, Z608 is written in the language of ancient cosmology, the emergence of an ordered cosmos from chaos or nothingness. In Z608 Wittgenstein applies this ancient cosmological language to the production of human language and thought. The cosmological language goes as far back in Wittgenstein as his view in TLP (5.63) and NB (84) that the human being is a microcosm (Cf. McDonough, 2021). Further, since much ancient cosmology interprets the cosmos as a living organism (Plato, Timaeus 30b-c; McDonough 2010), the organicist imagery in Z608’s second image, the emergence of a plant from nothing in the seed, is also traceable to ancient cosmology. All of this language and imagery from Z608 is also found in remarkably similar passages in Spengler’s Decline. Since Wittgenstein acknowledges his influence by Spengler, it appears virtually certain that Z608 was inspired by Spengler.

The deepest insight into the real point in Z608 is, however, explained in Spengler’s remark that “The highest to which man can attain, is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder let him be content … Nothing higher can it give him and nothing further should he seek behind it; here is the limit.” Spengler would recognize Z608 as the expression of the “highest” kind of experience achievable by human beings” - the feeling of wonder that Plato identifies as the origin of philosophy itself. That is, Spengler would immediately recognize Z608 as the quintessential philosophical passage since it expresses the experience of wonder at the emergence of language and thought from chaos or nothing that gives birth to philosophy itself!

Z608 takes one, in Spengler’s words at Decline (I, 105), to the very “limit” of human comprehension. That is, in Z608 Wittgenstein returns to the theme of the limits of language that had figured so prominently in his earlier TLP (Preface, 6.45, 6.53-7). Z608 states Wittgenstein’s mature perspective, near the end of his life, on those limits. Once again, Z608 is obviously not about neuroscientific theories. It presents a cosmological image of the limits of human language and understanding. It is philosophy in the grand sense known to genuine philosophers (one does not have to agree with them) like Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Goethe, Hegel and Spengler (See McDonough 2004, 2010, 2016 and 2021).

6. Wittgenstein’s Cosmological Mythos

The form of the awakening spirit is veneration.

Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” (139)

It is precisely because Z608 is an attempt to describe the limits of human understanding and language that it has to be expressed in cosmological imagery, not in a thesis or theory, something Spengler would have readily understood. It is a measure of how far philosophy has fallen in our time from what it once was that Wittgenstein’s attempt in Z608 to “bump his head” (PI, 119) against the limits of human understanding by expressing the “highest” experience that human beings can achieve, the “wonder” at the emergence of the “prime phenomena” that gives rise to philosophy itself, could have been seriously seen to be offering theories about the possibility of physical chaos, even sawdust, in the cranium of everyday language users and thinkers. Z608 is a reminder of what philosophy, hidden in the mists of the distant past, once was and is no more. Z608 is a myth, not in the shallow modern sense of a pleasing fairy tale, e.g., the story of Snow White, but in Spengler’s (Decline II, 290) positive sense,

Today we simply no longer know what myth is, for it is no mere aesthetically pleasing mode of representing something to oneself; but a piece of the most lively actuality that mines every corner of the waking consciousness and shakes the inmost structure of [one’s] being.

Wittgenstein’s aim in Z608 is, in fact, to “shake the inmost structure of [one’s] being” for a particular purpose. Spengler (Decline I, 399) anticipates this purpose,

[M]ythopoetic power belongs … exclusively to the springtime of great Cultures. Every myth of great style stands at the beginning of an awakening spirituality. Nowhere else is it to be found. There – it must be [all emphasis Spengler’s].

Z608 is addressed, not to the “cognitive science” of our time, but to what Wittgenstein refers to in PI (Preface) as “the poverty and darkness of our time.” It is an attempt to “shake the inmost structure of [the] being [of our spiritual “poverty and darkness”]” in order to shock his fallen contemporaries out of their dogmatic complacency in the hope, perhaps vain, that it is still not too late to “awaken” a new “spirituality,” a new “springtime”, in declining Western culture.

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[1] References to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (TLP) are to the Preface or proposition number, to his Notebooks, 1914-16 (NB) by page number, to his Philosophical Investigations (PI) by paragraph number (e.g., ‘PI, 52’) or page number (e.g., ‘PI, p. 217’) as required, to his Zettel (Z) by paragraph number, to his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (RFM) by section and paragraph number, (e.g., RFM, IV. 8), to his Culture and Value (CV) by page number. The reference to his “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” is not abbreviated.

[2] By Wittgenstein’s early philosophy is meant the Tractatus-logico-philosophicus and Notebooks, 1914-16. By his later philosophy, in this paper, is meant the Philosophical Investigations, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Zettel and “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough.”

[3] Indeed, Z608’s way of introducing this idea, that “a seed always produces a plant of the same kind as that from which it was produced,” a rose seed always produces a rose bush which produces a rose seed which produces a rose bush and so on, is an allusion to the ancient idea of cosmic cycles that repeat themselves in perpetuity in human history.