Tell them I've had a wonderful life

Reflections on Wittgenstein's death bed message, happiness and beatitude

Already for some time, Ludwig Wittgenstein knew he was dying. He died shortly after his 62nd birthday, just months after he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer which had spread to his bone marrow. His last months were spent in a frenzy of philosophical writing, a lot of which would be published posthumously by his friend and former student Elizabeth (G.E.M.) Anscombe.

When it became apparent his death was imminent, he warned his friends and they rushed to Cambridge. Present at his death bed were former students Elizabeth Anscombe, Yorick Smythies, and Maurice O'Connor Drury, as well as Conrad Pepler, a Catholic priest (at his own request; Wittgenstein was a Catholic-influenced agnostic). Unfortunately they came too late. He was already unconscious and would never wake up. But he relayed this message to them, “Tell them I've had a wonderful life.”

Wittgenstein on his death bed, picture by unknown photographer, Wikimedia Commons

By all accounts, this was a surprising utterance because Wittgenstein's life had not been easy, though it had certainly been eventful.

Also, he appeared to his friends the opposite of content, indeed, he seemed often fiercely unhappy. Philippa Foot, like Anscombe a philosopher who worked at Oxford, Somerville College, reflected on this death bed story in her book Natural Goodness (2001). She remarks that Wittgenstein's parting words to his friends “teach each us not to be too ready to speak of every good life as ‘a happy life’: Wittgenstein surely did not have a happy life, being too tormented and self-critical for that.” (p. 43). Further on, she writes

It is evident, however, that what has been said so far is quite inadequate as an account of that sense of the word in which it can be said that happiness is humanity's good. For one recalls Wittgenstein's famous death-bed insistence that he had had a wonderful life, which I have never seen questioned as the truth. Interpreted in terms of happy states of mind it would, however, have been very puzzling indeed if a life as troubled as his had been described as a good life. What Wittgenstein said rang true because of the things he had done, with rare passion and genius, and especially on account of his philosophy. Did he not say elsewhere 'The joy of my thoughts is the joy of my own strange life?' Joy is of the essence of a good life, but is of course compatible with prolonged suffering. In this connection I think also of an old Quaker woman of whom I have read, who after much persecution and suffering spoke of her 'joyous life' preaching the Word. She did not speak of her life as a happy life; it would have been puzzling if she had. So this example, too, helps us to question the identity of meaning between the expressions 'a good life' and 'a happy life' if the latter is thought of simply in terms of contentment, enjoyment, or pleasure. —Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness, p. 85

What are we to make about the connection between joy, pleasure, and happiness? My colleague Dan Haybron thinks that there are really two different concepts, it’s unfortunate they both have the same word denoting them (“happiness”). In his view, happiness can mean either the good life, or subjective wellbeing. A lot of disagreement such as what Foot alludes to is, according to Haybron, mainly verbal.

Other philosophers, such as Laura Sizer try to put both ideas of happiness together into one single unified concept: a good life requires not just the fulfillment of projects in a good life, but also a mood of subjective wellbeing.

I am, like Foot and Sizer, in favor of thinking of happiness as a unified concept. Lately, I've been exploring related notions (such as spinozist beatitude or blessedness) to try to think of a unified concept that captures being content, fulfilled, and having a sense of sufficiency.

As I mention in that linked blogpost, I think this notion of blessedness both clears a low and a high bar. The low bar because not much material wealth is needed, and far less than we aspire to or have, but yet also high bar should be cleared because happiness requires societal conditions that are increasingly not met, that help us to fulfill our potential the way Wittgenstein was able to do (he eventually resigned from his position at Cambridge so he could concentrate his remaining time on writing).

The right societal conditions allow a greater number of people to flourish (recall my discussion of the story of the Chinese immigrant factory worker). It is possible, like a hardy little prickly weed, to eek out an existence and to flourish in spite of all the systematic horridness thrown at one, for example, the long, monotonous hours of meaningless labor (in the case of the factory worker), gender or racial oppression, ableism, even abuse.

It is possible to even then secure survival, a survival of the whole person and not just safety, as Audre Lorde calls it (and which I discuss here in relation of the climate crisis).

Lordean survival means that we preserve ourselves, in the fullness of our being. Not merely having our material conditions met, but more than that. We are so many multiple selves. Securing the survival of those selves does, I think, constitute the good life and ultimate happiness.

So it is perhaps fitting to conclude this brief meditation on Wittgenstein's death bed words with this poem by Audre Lorde.

A Litany for Survival

by Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

There is something noble and beautiful, almost approximating an atheistic theodicy that seems to tell us our suffering is still worthwhile, to think that you might secure survival (in the Lordean sense of survival of your whole being) against all the odds. But it is far better to set up societal conditions so that many of us can reach this happy state.