Pokers Wild
What happens when geniuses
attack
By LEV GROSSMAN
If Jacques
Derrida had been born a Kennedy, he might have come close
to matching Ludwig Wittgenstein's curious combination of affluence
and intellect. Wittgenstein was both a philosopher of towering
importance and the scion of one of the wealthiest and most
influential families in Europe. He was also a scarily intense
guy. On Oct. 25, 1946, he attended a Cambridge University
discussion group at which Karl Popper, another major thinker,
was the guest speaker. The evening ended in bedlam when Wittgenstein
threatened Popper with a poker.
Or did he?
In Wittgenstein's Poker: The story of a ten-minute argument
between two great philosophers (Faber & Faber; 267 pages),
British journalists David Edmonds and John Eidinow exhaustively
investigate the circumstances surrounding the alleged incident.
Popper says Wittgenstein lost his cool; others disagree. But
it's not just another senior-common-room spat. For Edmonds
and Eidinow, the altercation is a jumping-off point: they
write around it in widening concentric circles, sketching
in its complex social and intellectual context.
Wittgenstein
and Popper were both from the intellectual hothouse of Vienna,
and were pit bulls when it came to public debate. Both were
Jewish, and both had their lives knocked off center by World
War II. (Wittgenstein's life teems with odd coincidences:
he went to high school with Hitler.) Despite their similarities,
the two came from opposite ends of the philosophical universe,
and the authors use the encounter to dramatize a clash of
ideas about the nature and purpose of philosophy. They make
the meeting of Popper and Wittgenstein seem as fateful as
that between the iceberg and the Titanic.
Fortunately,
Edmonds and Eidinow aren't philosophers, and their account
of Wittgenstein's difficult ideas is admirably clear. Defending
his doctoral thesis, Wittgenstein told his examiners, "Don't
worry. I know you'll never understand it." By the end of Wittgenstein's
Poker, you'll almost believe you could.
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