Paths for Thought: The architectonics of seclusion in Wittgenstein’s hut
Word Count: 2004
By Mio del Negro“I am trying to conduct you on tours in a certain country. I will try to show that the philosophical difficulties which arise in mathematics as elsewhere arise because we find ourselves in a strange town and do not know our way. So we must learn the topography by going from one place in the town to another, and from there to another, and so on.”1
Introduction:
To remove oneself from society into self-imposed exile, to return to a communion with nature, to seek an introspective clarity of mind under the most simplified of conditions in the everyday life– such were the Spartan measures taken by Austro-Hungarian Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), a self-professed ‘exile’. Not merely satisfied with translocating himself out of Cambridge university to the rural countryside of Norway, between 1914 to 1918 Wittgenstein planned as well as constructed a wooden hut measuring 7 by 8 meters at the cul-de-sac of Sognefjord (both Norway’s deepest and longest fjord). It is here he located his cabin across a lake 2 kilometers from the nearest village of Skjolden upon the steep gradient of a mountainside. It served not only as a place for “the union of clarity of mind and entanglement [but] a rootedness of philosophical thought in everyday life”2 He was to retreat here intermittently throughout his lifetime, once residing up to 13 months in isolation. This raises the conundrum: how is Wittgenstein's intention to distance himself in order to think reflected spatially in his self-designed cabin and its topography? And by extension, what relationship emerges here between the occupant in question and the occupied? Both questions are to be examined particularly through the case of Wittgenstein’s –previously disassembled and removed from site- cabin in Skjolden, Norway; a place marked by isolation, introspection, and inundating wilderness. A re-tracing of the memory of site topography, surviving remains of the cabin as well as anecdotes from the Philosopheroccupant himself will be employed to frame both questions, whilst speculating the role and place of the inhabitant founded on the authors interpretation of the architectural elements of the cabin.
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Lecture IV” Essay, in Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939, 44, Hassoks Sussex, England: The Harvester Press Limited: Jon Spiers, 1976.
2 M. Riley, “Thinking Place: re-imagining Wittgenstein's Hut at Skjolden”, Thinking place, http://thinkingplace.org/wittgenstein/.
Spatiality of thought
Situated at 50 metres above sea level upon a steep gradient (55, Luster, Vestland, 6876, Norway (N 61° 27' 24.6888", E 7° 30' 45.9936")) (refer to fig’s 1 and 2), Wittgenstein’s remote hut is perched on a high narrow ledge halfway up the mountainside of Våtufsi. It faces Northwest towards an unobstructed view of the opalescent Lake “Eidsvanet”, embraced by mountainous cliffs just 20 metres Northward3 The faint, arduous path to access the site runs across “Fortun” River4 which Wittgenstein could wade through when the water level was low, followed by Vaiane farmland). Nonetheless, depending on the season in the warmer months rowing across lake Eidsvanet in wooden rowing boats directly from Skjolden served as the primary point of access to Wittgenstein’s cabin. Finally, a steep climb through thick brash edging the lake is made up the precipitous slope towards the cabin, where metal rods drilled into the rock served for support when the rocky slope was wet in winter In spite of the cabin’s stark remoteness, during winter months when lake Eidsvanet was frozen significant activity occurred, particularly children and young villagers from Skjolden whom ice skated and caused shouting and noise5 Interpretively symbolic of his self-reflection, Wittgenstein’s choice of situating the cabin at the vantage point of Eidsvatnet, a natural element, may be viewed as a metaphorical return to a duality within himself, in other words a material expression of his introspective intention.
3 Jan Estep. “Showing the Way out of the Fly Bottle: Searching for Wittgenstein in Norway.” Cultural Geographies 15, no. 2 (2008): p. 255–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44251206.
4 “Østerike - the site of Wittgensteins Hut in Skjolden”, Visit Norway, https://www.visitnorway.com/listings/%C3%98sterike-the-site-of-wittgensteins-hut-inskjolden/245052/
5 “Østerike”.
It is within this vast network of freeform pathways encompassing the hut (see fig. 3) that Wittgenstein allegedly pondered, reflected, and refined his theories on the fundamental principles of logical syntax, and where he developed his most seminal work including the preliminary notes of of his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), often regarded as his magnum opus. As Macfarlane elucidates:
for Wittgenstein, following lines of enquiry on foot as well as in the mind was integral to his philosophy (...) in Skjolden [he] spent a long dark winter contemplating logic and walking the paths that bordered the fjord and led up into the mountains. The landscape – ascetic, decisive – matched the thinking he undertook and in the course of that winter he solved a major philosophical crux concerning the symbolism of truth functions6 .
Wittgenstein’s German use of the word ‘Denkbewegungen’ within this context translates consistently to “thought movements”, “thought paths”, and/or “thought-ways”, illuminating Wittgenstein’s instrumentalization of tracing and retracing paths within the physical space as a device to develop cerebral lines of thought. To Wittgenstein, the landscape and its meandering pathways thus gain meaning as an abstraction of the territory of his mind, an introspective journey where paths in the absence of other human interventions become a vessel for inducing lines of self-inquiry. Furthermore, as the philosopher himself asserts, “philosophical difficulties arise […] because we find ourselves in a strange town and do not know our way. So we must learn the topography by going from one place in the town to another, and from there to another, and so on”7 . Here, Wittgenstein implies the correlation
between familiarizing oneself with a landscape from as many paths (points of perspective) as possible with building ‘a bigger picture’ when developing philosophical discourse. In this way, he presents the means of a union between the external (physical reality) and internal (subjective concepts within the cerebral realm). The overarching ambition here is to reflect on the border between the interior and the exterior, on “the threshold between nature and habitat, where links are forged between humans and their outside”8 .
In Wittgenstein’s preface to his posthumous Philosophical Investigations (1953), he reinforces the argument that thoughts gain dimension and spatiality (thereby an element of reality) through the cross-exploration of the landscape, and hence the notion of its precipitation into materialization:
The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts soon grew feeble if I tried to force them along a single track against their natural inclination. And this was of course connected with the very nature of the investigation. For it compels us to travel criss-cross in every direction over a wide field of thought. The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in these long meandering journeys 9
Here he explicitly draws parallels between thoughts and the physical surroundings of the mountain paths in which they were conceived- associating “travelling criss-cross in every direction” with “a wide field” of thought, in addition to referring to “philosophical remarks” as “sketches of landscapes”. Paradoxically so, by navigating outside Wittgenstein travelled within, mapping a topography of the mind as within the landscape.
8 M. O., Esprit, no. 318 (10) (2005): p. 200, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24470137
9 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, (eds) Peter Hacker & Joachim Schulte, Oxford UK: Blackwell 2009, p. 3.
Relating this to the cabin site, an inspection of the landscape based on Wittgenstein’s only rudimentary sketch of the huts location made in 1936 (refer to Fig. 4, above) reveals a space with strikingly little memory of human presence. Virtually unmarked save for the sole presence of a foot trail which point to their existence, the surroundings are instead dominated by coniferous forests, marshes, birch trees, and mosses; at a far remove from the intellectual circles of Cambridge from which Wittgenstein reigned. Precisely what he intended to escape, as he ruefully noted to his former teacher that he “prostituted his mind speaking to intelligent people”, this place contrastingly offered a sense of simplicity and “quiet seriousness”10 by way of its hermetic seclusion Returning to Wittgenstein’s map, the paucity of the sketch and the lack of representational accuracy in the relative positions of its demarcated features of the topography (i.e. mountains, hills, rivers) creates a high level of abstraction and appears more empirical or intuitive than scientific in its execution. The resulting vague orientation highlights, rather, the psychological condition of its creator: a man “who trusted our ordinary abilities to communicate, to speak within the same ‘language games’ as [Wittgenstein] called them”11 , signalling a coming to terms with his love-hate relationship with “more to the picture than pictured’ and the limited power of reference12 (a notion which later informed his developing theories on the nature of logic)
Phenomenological hut
10 Jan Estep, “Showing the Way out of the Fly Bottle: Searching for Wittgenstein in Norway”, Cultural Geographies 15, no. 2 (2008): p. 256, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44251206.
11 Ibid, 257
12 Ibid
Where once stood Wittgenstein’s wooden structure of the huts now remains the granite stone foundation measuring 7 by 8 metres and a root cellar characteristic of the Norwegian traditional vernacular, with inundating vegetation occupying the site in testament to the passing of time since the huts removal in 1951 following his death. An abandoned relic with neither commemorative plaques nor markings, the site now appears unassuming or even, in the words of his follower Jan Estep, as “nothing special”13 - yet this is precisely what Wittgenstein sought in his search for solace in seclusion. Following a visit to the site in 1984, Oxaal re-affirms that “the incongruity between this beautiful setting and this pathetic little house was very disappointing”14
This disparity, however, lays hierarchical emphasis on the surrounding nature over the nestled structure itself, demonstrating a priority of focus for the surrounding nature by means of his minimal intervention approach. The simplicity of the square plan, the lack of interior ornamentation coupled with its extremely small dimensions enabled an ease for the hermitphilosopher occupant, reducing the space down to its essential domestic functions. Cooking, reading, writing, sleeping and other essential activities -but nothing beyond- was accommodated by this highly utilitarian setting. This is all the more facilitated through the open floor plan, with its hierarchical interior spatial arrangement centred around the hearth (fireplace), a single desk and chair and second level with a single bed: a space specifically designed for one inhabitant. The hut of Wittgenstein, the individual subject, “who questions his own self is therefore something more than a neutral setting; in it there lives a person who thinks […], and this thinking is, in turn, that which dwells in the house”15 Moreover, the hut, the construction of the dwelling, “is not so much a metaphor as the very subject of existential philosophy”16 . That is, an authentic, genuine, and ad hoc form of inhabiting unfolds in rejection of social hierarchies or familial relationships, ultimately giving rise to a re-thinking of the interior spatial programme, to a re-interpretation of its existential meaning, and a motion towards the origins of philosophy.
Furthermore, Wittgenstein’s choice for minimal interior lighting reveals a phenomenological existence: living inside the hut likely gave an outward resting place17 This experience of ‘spatial inversion’(that is, of the exterior from the interior space) was likely facilitated through “the dark rooms overseeing the starry night with a single lamp glowing in the windows making for a life in solitude, full of dreams, anxieties and realities”18. Heavily reliant upon sources of
13 Ibid.
14 Ivar Oxaal, On the Trail to Wittgenstein’s Hut; the Historical Background of the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Press 2011, p. 150.
15 Iñaki Ábalos, The Good Life: A Guided Visit to the Houses of Modernity, Zurich, Switzerland: Park Books, 2017, p. 56.
16 Ábalos, The Good Life, p. 56.
17 Dinda L Gorlée, “Wittgenstein’s Utopia”, American Book Review 29, no. 6 (2008): p. 10–11, https://doi.org/10.1353/abr.2008.0121.
18 Gorlée, “Wittgenstein’s Utopia”, p. 11.
natural light such as the sun, the moon and the stars, Wittgenstein established direct contact with the natural elements, adopting them as an architectural element integrated within his hut. Additionally, features upon the hut such as a steep pitched roof for relieving snow build-up as well as a few small glass windows upon each side echoed not only the traditional vernacular of nature Norwegian Westcoast building but payed homage to Wittgenstein’s background by employing stylistic tropes of the Austrian Chalet (as exemplified in his inclusion of a second floor and a balcony overlooking the lake)19 Wittgenstein thus exposes what he proposed as absent from philosophical study during the 20th century: a “necessary rootedness in the fabric of everyday life”20
Conclusion
Whilst Wittgenstein’s self-imposed seclusion at his hut in Skjolden, Norway, to develop undisturbed philosophical thought reflects on the facade one man’s phenomenological search for clarity and introspection, paradoxically so, his distancing from society also highlights the contemporary psychological condition at large: one of disassociation and over-abundance (made increasingly apparent through the rapid emergence of technological decentralization such as the ‘metaverse’). Likewise, Wittgenstein's hut ultimately shows the interrelation between spatial processes and thought processes as a form of grounding of thought in space, exemplified through the aforementioned case of walking along pathways as an epistemological method to promote lines of self-inquiry.
20 Ibid.
