Dr. Drury's talks with Wittgenstein

Norman Malcolm’s memoir of Wittgenstein is one of the little masterpieces of the 20^th century. It’s clear and brief. It gives you a sense of one of the world’s great thinkers.

Maurice O’Connor Drury also wrote memoirs of Wittgenstein — two, in fact. The first is short: 20 pages in the edition I have. The second is about 75 pages, approaching Malcolm’s in length.

Both memoirists studied with Wittgenstein. Malcolm, an American, was interested in philosophy and became a professor. Drury was interested in the notion of what it meant to live a good life. He went to Cambridge planning to be an Anglican clergyman. At least partly under Wittgenstein’s influence, Drury switched from theology to medicine. He became a psychiatrist.

Malcolm’s little book is a straightforward narrative of his time with Wittgenstein. Drury and Wittgenstein continued to have conversations until Wittgenstein died in 1951. The two friends talked most interestingly about good life, ethics and religion. After each conversation, Drury made notes on Wittgenstein’s remarks.

These two intrigue me:

 

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

 

I’d have argued that the idea of a private religion is like the idea of a private language: incoherent. When we use the word “religion,” most of us are talking about an activity with common features: shared beliefs, shared rituals, shared values. But Carlyle talked about religion as something that is distinctly one’s own. Wittgenstein did too.

 

If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn’t be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different.

 

Wittgenstein thought he could live a useful life by being a good engineer, gardener, elementary-school teacher, hospital worker or philosopher.

The kind of work he did could change. The kind of attention he paid to his work — the kind of devotion he extended to it — did not.

• Sources: M. O’C. Drury’s two memoirs, “Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein” and “Conversations with Wittgenstein” are in Recollections of Wittgenstein, edited by Rush Rhees; Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 76-96 and pp. 97-171. The quotations are from the second memoir, pp. 102 and 114.

Norman Malcolm: Wittgenstein: A Memoir; Oxford University Press, 1977. For an earlier note on Malcolm’s wonderful book, see “Malcolm: ‘Wittgenstein: A Memoir,” April 26, 2023.