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Wittgenstein's Artillery: Philosophy as Poetry
How Wittgenstein sought a more effective way of reaching his audience by a poetic style of doing philosophy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, "Really one should write philosophy only as one writes poetry." In Wittgenstein's Artillery , James Klagge shows how, in search of ways to reach his audience, Wittgenstein tried a more poetic style of doing philosophy. Klagge argues that, deploying this new philosophical "artillery"--Klagge's term for Wittgenstein's methods of influencing his readers and students--Wittgenstein moved from an esoteric mode to an evangelical mode, aiming for an effect on his audience that was noncognitive, appealing to the temperament in addition to the intellect.
Wittgenstein was an artillery spotter--directing artillery fire to targets--in the Austrian army during World War I, and Klagge argues that, years later, he became a philosophical spotter, struggling to find the right artillery to accomplish his philosophical purpose. Klagge shows how Wittgenstein's work with his students influenced his style of writing philosophy and motivated him to care about the effect of his ideas on his audience. To illustrate Wittgenstein's evolving approach, Klagge draws on not only Wittgenstein's best-known works but also such lesser-known material as notebooks, dictations, lectures, and recollections of students. Klagge then goes beyond Wittgenstein to present a range of literature--biblical parables and children's stories, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche--as other examples of the poetic approach. He concludes by offering his own attempts at a poetic approach to addressing philosophical issues.
Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, "Really one should write philosophy only as one writes poetry." In Wittgenstein's Artillery , James Klagge shows how, in search of ways to reach his audience, Wittgenstein tried a more poetic style of doing philosophy. Klagge argues that, deploying this new philosophical "artillery"--Klagge's term for Wittgenstein's methods of influencing his readers and students--Wittgenstein moved from an esoteric mode to an evangelical mode, aiming for an effect on his audience that was noncognitive, appealing to the temperament in addition to the intellect.
Wittgenstein was an artillery spotter--directing artillery fire to targets--in the Austrian army during World War I, and Klagge argues that, years later, he became a philosophical spotter, struggling to find the right artillery to accomplish his philosophical purpose. Klagge shows how Wittgenstein's work with his students influenced his style of writing philosophy and motivated him to care about the effect of his ideas on his audience. To illustrate Wittgenstein's evolving approach, Klagge draws on not only Wittgenstein's best-known works but also such lesser-known material as notebooks, dictations, lectures, and recollections of students. Klagge then goes beyond Wittgenstein to present a range of literature--biblical parables and children's stories, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche--as other examples of the poetic approach. He concludes by offering his own attempts at a poetic approach to addressing philosophical issues.
- GenresPhilosophy
272 pages, Hardcover
Published August 3, 2021
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August 17, 2021
Please note I am the author of this book. I read it as soon as I got a hold of a copy, looking for any typos or formatting problems. I can report that I didn’t find any worth mentioning! You should take my 5-star rating with a grain of salt, but I love the book. You should, of course, decide for yourself.
But I did want to make some comments pertaining to format and style. You will notice that the book has endnotes rather than footnotes. That was intentional. I find footnotes to be distracting. If you are a relative beginner with Wittgenstein, you should ignore the endnotes. There are a lot of them and they will distract you from the main narrative. (In fact, there are 67 pages of endnotes for 160 pages of text!) They contain things like additional support for my claims, or related stories that branch off the main narrative but are not essential to it. I love the endnotes, but they are for more experienced readers of Wittgenstein. If you want, after you have read a chapter, you might scan the endnotes to see if there is anything you want to follow up. Joachim Schulte, a reviewer of my previous book, Wittgenstein in Exile, wrote this in a review: “Quite generally, readers of this book will be well-advised to look at these endnotes. Far from being mere collections of references to the literature, they contain many instructive asides and examinations of helpful source material.” But he was writing that review for other scholars.
As you get in a couple chapters you may notice some repetition of quotations. There are several that come up in various places. This again was intentional. Instead of simply referring back to a previous quotation, I want to show how it again becomes relevant in a different context. Wittgenstein compared his philosophical work to that of a tour guide, who shows you around town, coming back to various landmarks from different directions. The same is true of my use of passages like the four introductory sentences to Wittgenstein’s remarks on Frazer, the opening sentences of the “Philosophy” chapter from the Big Typescript, Anscombe’s anecdote about Wittgenstein finding the right medicine for her confusion, and Wittgenstein’s love for Plato’s myths. These landmark passages help tie together other discussions.
One of the experts quoted on the back cover, Marjorie Perloff, calls my book “highly personal.” This is true. It is not only a book about Wittgenstein’s views, but I look at where he fell short, and I try to do some of the things that Wittgenstein felt he didn’t do very well. In this sense, I have engaged with Wittgenstein’s project, and that has been a highly personal journey. While I feel relatively confident about the Wittgenstein aspect of the book, the book shows how much I know, and thus how much I don’t know, about poetry/literature/Dichtung.
Another expert quoted on the back cover, John Gibson, concluded his assessment of my book with: “It also happens to be a ton of fun to read.” (Unfortunately, while that sentence is included on the book’s page on the MIT Press website and the Amazon webpage, it is NOT included on the back cover!) To me, that is the highest praise. I want to write in a way that is engaging (even while being scholarly), and it is gratifying if that is true.
But I did want to make some comments pertaining to format and style. You will notice that the book has endnotes rather than footnotes. That was intentional. I find footnotes to be distracting. If you are a relative beginner with Wittgenstein, you should ignore the endnotes. There are a lot of them and they will distract you from the main narrative. (In fact, there are 67 pages of endnotes for 160 pages of text!) They contain things like additional support for my claims, or related stories that branch off the main narrative but are not essential to it. I love the endnotes, but they are for more experienced readers of Wittgenstein. If you want, after you have read a chapter, you might scan the endnotes to see if there is anything you want to follow up. Joachim Schulte, a reviewer of my previous book, Wittgenstein in Exile, wrote this in a review: “Quite generally, readers of this book will be well-advised to look at these endnotes. Far from being mere collections of references to the literature, they contain many instructive asides and examinations of helpful source material.” But he was writing that review for other scholars.
As you get in a couple chapters you may notice some repetition of quotations. There are several that come up in various places. This again was intentional. Instead of simply referring back to a previous quotation, I want to show how it again becomes relevant in a different context. Wittgenstein compared his philosophical work to that of a tour guide, who shows you around town, coming back to various landmarks from different directions. The same is true of my use of passages like the four introductory sentences to Wittgenstein’s remarks on Frazer, the opening sentences of the “Philosophy” chapter from the Big Typescript, Anscombe’s anecdote about Wittgenstein finding the right medicine for her confusion, and Wittgenstein’s love for Plato’s myths. These landmark passages help tie together other discussions.
One of the experts quoted on the back cover, Marjorie Perloff, calls my book “highly personal.” This is true. It is not only a book about Wittgenstein’s views, but I look at where he fell short, and I try to do some of the things that Wittgenstein felt he didn’t do very well. In this sense, I have engaged with Wittgenstein’s project, and that has been a highly personal journey. While I feel relatively confident about the Wittgenstein aspect of the book, the book shows how much I know, and thus how much I don’t know, about poetry/literature/Dichtung.
Another expert quoted on the back cover, John Gibson, concluded his assessment of my book with: “It also happens to be a ton of fun to read.” (Unfortunately, while that sentence is included on the book’s page on the MIT Press website and the Amazon webpage, it is NOT included on the back cover!) To me, that is the highest praise. I want to write in a way that is engaging (even while being scholarly), and it is gratifying if that is true.
January 29, 2026
Klagge’s book takes a unique and compelling perspective on Wittgenstein’s development and, in particular, on the place of “non-cognitive” approaches to teaching, persuasion, and meaning in Wittgenstein’s mature thinking.
He starts with a distinction that redraws the traditional division between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” thinking, between the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations. Rather than a purely intellectual conversion away from the more restricted, confined view of language in the Tractatus to the realization that language has “many uses” in the Investigations, Klagge hinges Wittgenstein’s development on a change from what he calls “esotericism” to “evangelism.” That takes some explaining.
Esotericism according to Klagge subdivides into different strains, but in general it is attentiveness to an audience meeting certain criteria, e.g., in Wittgenstein’s case, those who share with him a “frame of mind.” Thus there is no attempt to draw in new, “naive” audiences or audiences who oppose the thoughts being shared. A narrowcast.
Evangelism could be considered a complement rather than an opposite. An evangelist seeks to in some sense convert his audience to a way of thinking from some previous, possibly erroneous, way of thinking. Doing so doesn’t allow the speaker/thinker to take for granted an initial affinity of thought. Klagge emphasizes in a number of places that evangelism requires providing not just a correction but a path from a former way of thinking to a new way of thinking.
Klagge’s claim is that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus period was an esoteric writer/thinker, as evidenced by Wittgenstein’s own remarks in his Preface to the Tractatus about the likely and appropriate audience for the book. Later, roughly during the early 1930s, Wittgenstein becomes much more audience-aware, addressing tendencies of thought or even temptations towards ways of thinking other than those he wants to follow, as evidenced by the dialogue-like character of his writing during those and later years and by explicit language in those writings, such as “We are tempted to think . . . “ or “We tend to . . . .” Those latter expressions also reveal a concern for building a “path” to a new way of thinking by situating the reader/listener in a familiar tendency, a familiar way of thinking, before attempting to lead her to a new one.
Those years, the 1930s, are not coincidentally years in which Wittgenstein was actually giving philosophical lectures to actual audiences of students. His role called upon him to be a true teacher, to lead his students toward some new way of thinking, beginning with the acknowledgement of their present ways of thinking.
This evangelistic approach is crucially not strictly a matter of rational argument. To move a person from an accustomed and comfortable way of thinking to a new one is rather to be understood as a “conversion.” This is the sense in which the movement from the old way to the new is a non-cognitive movement, in fact, a matter of influencing a person’s “will” to leave one place and move to another.
I recall, and I wish I had the reference, a story of Bertrand Russell expressing some distrust for G. E. Moore, because he had by some purely rational and simple argument convinced Moore to abandon a position he had taken and adopt another. Russell’s (possibly joking) distrust arises from exactly that expectation that we bind ourselves to positions, philosophical or otherwise, not just by rational means but by non-rational ones as well — emotional ties, communal ties, loyalties to others holding those positions, etc.
In much of his later writing, Wittgenstein is concerned with resolving philosophical problems, not by answering them or by refuting erroneous answers, but by guiding the philosopher, or anyone in the grips of a philosophical problem, away from the problem, by in some sense “curing” him of the problem. The non-cognitive approach has obvious resonance with this idea of relieving the problem rather than solving it.
And the idea of taking the student or thinker along a path that leads him away from the problem has obvious resonance with Wittgenstein’s famous image of showing the fly the way out of the fly bottle. The fly’s, or the philosopher’s, perspective shifts under the influence of some experience, which could be an argument but needn’t be. Klagge mentions in passing the Zen master slapping his student as just such an experience.
Of course Wittgenstein’s own “artillery” of experiences to offer is dominated by spoken or written words. That spoken or written words, at least in the form familiar to philosophers, may not be the best artillery for the job is the inspiration for the book’s title, and for Wittgenstein’s own remark, quoted by Klagge, “Quite different artillery is needed here from anything I am in a position to muster.” (Wittgenstein had himself served as an artillery spotter in World War I).
Klagge’s discussion of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough is especially interesting in expanding on this non-cognitive artillery. Wittgenstein generally criticized Frazer’s anthropology as casting rituals and the beliefs associated with them as “mistakes” in the face of “scientific” understandings of reality. Klagge explores Wittgenstein’s thoughts about what it takes to give up a practice such as a ritual, and whether adherence to a practice is, as Frazer would have it, dependent on the truth of some appropriate empirical beliefs (e.g., that performance of some ritual will have some empirical efficacy).
What is interesting to me in reflecting on the discussion is the emphasis Frazer (and we) would place on the “y” in statements of the form “x believes that y” such that, if y were false, x would give up the belief. If y is shown to be false, then x will stop believing it. But this is to take x out of the picture, that the empirical truth of y could be the only reason that x believes that y. And for that matter that any x would give up their belief, that who x is, why they are motivated to believe or even care about y at all doesn’t matter.
We could cite in opposition such things as religious faith — surely the belief in transubstantiation can’t be so simple as an empirical belief in the constitution of a wafer. But the point may be more general — why do we believe the things we do, and to bring it back to Klagge’s discussion, adopt the practices we adopt? Is it because they are rooted in empirical truths?
This question in turn rises to general questions, philosophical ones, about why we have the epistemic, moral, and other practices that we have, in particular, practices of justifying epistemic or moral claims. Are those claims ultimately rooted in some foundational truths, or in some more non-cognitive, maybe non-rational binding? Wittgenstein says in On Certainty that “justification comes to an end,” and later, “At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives).”
What then is “persuasion?” Klagge argues that Wittgenstein turns at this point to the “artillery” he believes not to be in his arsenal, poetry, or “Dichtung” in German, which, as Klagge explains, doesn’t translate precisely to the English “poetry” but to something maybe broader and more akin, in my own words, to writing meant not to convince by stepwise argument but by providing something more experiential to the reader.
Klagge actually thinks that Wittgenstein may be more adept than he thought he was with Dichtung. Wittgenstein’s notion (and practice) of “perspicuous representation” seems his best weapon — a way of redrawing, through simile or sometimes images, in order to get his reader/listener to think differently, to see a matter differently.
Another reference I wish I could find is to a remark by Stanley Kubrick. When audiences for his movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” complained that they didn’t understand the movie, Kubrick’s answer was that he hadn’t given them something to “understand” in words. What he had given them, he said, was an “experience.” Something that might change them in some way. After all, it was a movie, not a lecture.
Likewise when you read or listen to a poem, it’s not as if you construct an understanding word by word. You experience the poem start to finish and maybe back again and then in reflection. It might change the way you think or act in ways not directly related to the words of the poem.
Obviously, I think Klagge is onto something here, that Wittgenstein was struggling to say clearly. It relates to Wittgenstein’s “naturalism,” where that doesn’t mean some sort of scientific naturalism, but the embeddedness of everything that we do in what he called a “form of life.” Forms of life are not justified or at bottom rational — they just are what they are, “what we do” in Wittgenstein’s terms.
If this is so, it’s still hard not to keep questioning. How do we know that our “form of life” or our practices, what we do, are “right?” Well now we are back in the philosopher’s fly bottle. But it’s hard not to find your way back in! Wittgenstein says in Lectures on Aesthetics, “I am in a sense making propaganda for one style of thinking as opposed to another.” The choice of words (granted this is taken from student notes) harkens back to the fly bottle. Is “propaganda” what we rest on?
He starts with a distinction that redraws the traditional division between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” thinking, between the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations. Rather than a purely intellectual conversion away from the more restricted, confined view of language in the Tractatus to the realization that language has “many uses” in the Investigations, Klagge hinges Wittgenstein’s development on a change from what he calls “esotericism” to “evangelism.” That takes some explaining.
Esotericism according to Klagge subdivides into different strains, but in general it is attentiveness to an audience meeting certain criteria, e.g., in Wittgenstein’s case, those who share with him a “frame of mind.” Thus there is no attempt to draw in new, “naive” audiences or audiences who oppose the thoughts being shared. A narrowcast.
Evangelism could be considered a complement rather than an opposite. An evangelist seeks to in some sense convert his audience to a way of thinking from some previous, possibly erroneous, way of thinking. Doing so doesn’t allow the speaker/thinker to take for granted an initial affinity of thought. Klagge emphasizes in a number of places that evangelism requires providing not just a correction but a path from a former way of thinking to a new way of thinking.
Klagge’s claim is that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus period was an esoteric writer/thinker, as evidenced by Wittgenstein’s own remarks in his Preface to the Tractatus about the likely and appropriate audience for the book. Later, roughly during the early 1930s, Wittgenstein becomes much more audience-aware, addressing tendencies of thought or even temptations towards ways of thinking other than those he wants to follow, as evidenced by the dialogue-like character of his writing during those and later years and by explicit language in those writings, such as “We are tempted to think . . . “ or “We tend to . . . .” Those latter expressions also reveal a concern for building a “path” to a new way of thinking by situating the reader/listener in a familiar tendency, a familiar way of thinking, before attempting to lead her to a new one.
Those years, the 1930s, are not coincidentally years in which Wittgenstein was actually giving philosophical lectures to actual audiences of students. His role called upon him to be a true teacher, to lead his students toward some new way of thinking, beginning with the acknowledgement of their present ways of thinking.
This evangelistic approach is crucially not strictly a matter of rational argument. To move a person from an accustomed and comfortable way of thinking to a new one is rather to be understood as a “conversion.” This is the sense in which the movement from the old way to the new is a non-cognitive movement, in fact, a matter of influencing a person’s “will” to leave one place and move to another.
I recall, and I wish I had the reference, a story of Bertrand Russell expressing some distrust for G. E. Moore, because he had by some purely rational and simple argument convinced Moore to abandon a position he had taken and adopt another. Russell’s (possibly joking) distrust arises from exactly that expectation that we bind ourselves to positions, philosophical or otherwise, not just by rational means but by non-rational ones as well — emotional ties, communal ties, loyalties to others holding those positions, etc.
In much of his later writing, Wittgenstein is concerned with resolving philosophical problems, not by answering them or by refuting erroneous answers, but by guiding the philosopher, or anyone in the grips of a philosophical problem, away from the problem, by in some sense “curing” him of the problem. The non-cognitive approach has obvious resonance with this idea of relieving the problem rather than solving it.
And the idea of taking the student or thinker along a path that leads him away from the problem has obvious resonance with Wittgenstein’s famous image of showing the fly the way out of the fly bottle. The fly’s, or the philosopher’s, perspective shifts under the influence of some experience, which could be an argument but needn’t be. Klagge mentions in passing the Zen master slapping his student as just such an experience.
Of course Wittgenstein’s own “artillery” of experiences to offer is dominated by spoken or written words. That spoken or written words, at least in the form familiar to philosophers, may not be the best artillery for the job is the inspiration for the book’s title, and for Wittgenstein’s own remark, quoted by Klagge, “Quite different artillery is needed here from anything I am in a position to muster.” (Wittgenstein had himself served as an artillery spotter in World War I).
Klagge’s discussion of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough is especially interesting in expanding on this non-cognitive artillery. Wittgenstein generally criticized Frazer’s anthropology as casting rituals and the beliefs associated with them as “mistakes” in the face of “scientific” understandings of reality. Klagge explores Wittgenstein’s thoughts about what it takes to give up a practice such as a ritual, and whether adherence to a practice is, as Frazer would have it, dependent on the truth of some appropriate empirical beliefs (e.g., that performance of some ritual will have some empirical efficacy).
What is interesting to me in reflecting on the discussion is the emphasis Frazer (and we) would place on the “y” in statements of the form “x believes that y” such that, if y were false, x would give up the belief. If y is shown to be false, then x will stop believing it. But this is to take x out of the picture, that the empirical truth of y could be the only reason that x believes that y. And for that matter that any x would give up their belief, that who x is, why they are motivated to believe or even care about y at all doesn’t matter.
We could cite in opposition such things as religious faith — surely the belief in transubstantiation can’t be so simple as an empirical belief in the constitution of a wafer. But the point may be more general — why do we believe the things we do, and to bring it back to Klagge’s discussion, adopt the practices we adopt? Is it because they are rooted in empirical truths?
This question in turn rises to general questions, philosophical ones, about why we have the epistemic, moral, and other practices that we have, in particular, practices of justifying epistemic or moral claims. Are those claims ultimately rooted in some foundational truths, or in some more non-cognitive, maybe non-rational binding? Wittgenstein says in On Certainty that “justification comes to an end,” and later, “At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives).”
What then is “persuasion?” Klagge argues that Wittgenstein turns at this point to the “artillery” he believes not to be in his arsenal, poetry, or “Dichtung” in German, which, as Klagge explains, doesn’t translate precisely to the English “poetry” but to something maybe broader and more akin, in my own words, to writing meant not to convince by stepwise argument but by providing something more experiential to the reader.
Klagge actually thinks that Wittgenstein may be more adept than he thought he was with Dichtung. Wittgenstein’s notion (and practice) of “perspicuous representation” seems his best weapon — a way of redrawing, through simile or sometimes images, in order to get his reader/listener to think differently, to see a matter differently.
Another reference I wish I could find is to a remark by Stanley Kubrick. When audiences for his movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” complained that they didn’t understand the movie, Kubrick’s answer was that he hadn’t given them something to “understand” in words. What he had given them, he said, was an “experience.” Something that might change them in some way. After all, it was a movie, not a lecture.
Likewise when you read or listen to a poem, it’s not as if you construct an understanding word by word. You experience the poem start to finish and maybe back again and then in reflection. It might change the way you think or act in ways not directly related to the words of the poem.
Obviously, I think Klagge is onto something here, that Wittgenstein was struggling to say clearly. It relates to Wittgenstein’s “naturalism,” where that doesn’t mean some sort of scientific naturalism, but the embeddedness of everything that we do in what he called a “form of life.” Forms of life are not justified or at bottom rational — they just are what they are, “what we do” in Wittgenstein’s terms.
If this is so, it’s still hard not to keep questioning. How do we know that our “form of life” or our practices, what we do, are “right?” Well now we are back in the philosopher’s fly bottle. But it’s hard not to find your way back in! Wittgenstein says in Lectures on Aesthetics, “I am in a sense making propaganda for one style of thinking as opposed to another.” The choice of words (granted this is taken from student notes) harkens back to the fly bottle. Is “propaganda” what we rest on?
April 1, 2026
There is some engaging material here even though I think Klagge's thesis is thinly supported. He's trying to show that Wittgenstein evolved from an esotericist into an evangelist, largely spurred by the need to address students' arguments after his return to Cambridge. In other words, that he switched from Making Pronouncements to actually trying to persuade interlocutors. In broad strokes, I guess maybe it's plausible. Certainly Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty anticipate objections and exert some effort to rebut them, more so than the crystalline declarations of the TLP. But that's grading on a curve. Even late-period LW does not strike me as especially invested in the back-and-forth of rational discourse. Nor, for that matter, does early LW seem like he's intentionally obscuring his points (although I don't take Klagge to use "esotericism" in the robust sense of concealed secret teachings--he basically uses "esotericist" to mean "not everyone will understand his point").
Rather, the through-line seems to be someone struggling to communicate how he sees the world, and trying out different techniques to reach beyond his own subjectivity when others stubbornly refuse to share it. It does seem like reentering the hurly-burly of academia gave LW more appreciation for persuasion, but honestly, his proclivity to shout down contrary views seemed to survive to the end. There's no tidy story of linear growth here. There are many statements in PI that belong on the "esotericist" side of the ledger, if we're stuck dichotomizing with Klagge's categories. Klagge seems to recognize this implicitly, and his definitions of the two ends of the pole are watered down too much to stake out any truly controversial position.
That said, I don't really care. Because even Klagge seems half-hearted in his commitment to the thesis, and instead spends many pages just musing on more interesting tangents and influences on LW. For me personally, the sections on Kierkegaard were the most interesting, and I'd love to see Klagge expand that into a full-length treatment. Klagge traces LW's familiarity with SK (and indeed, Kierkegaard appears to have featured in the canon of the entire Wittgenstein family), and also articulates where their projects converged and diverged. Although LW wrestled with ethical doubts on SK's methods of indirect communication, it's clear that it had significant influence on his own approach. Both thinkers certainly brought more of a literary approach to philosophy than many of the schematizers and pedants that occupy the field. Klagge has interesting things to say about that too, with some excellent material on the ancient struggle between philosophy and poetry. He largely wants to paint poetry as a persuasive art that wins its converts through affective mimesis rather than argumentation, which ties to LW's efforts to shift the movements of thought in his readers.
In terms of organization, this book is a bit of a muddle. The chapters almost read like standalone papers, and the same handful of passages get quoted (in full...) multiple times. Like, an absurd amount sometimes, where passages get repeated on adjacent pages. It gives the text a bit of a slap-dash feel, but I didn't consider it fatal to the project. I do feel like Klagge is really trying to understand LW as a person and a thinker. Even when he is grinding the axe of his (dubious) thesis, it's throwing off sparks of insight. This should definitely not be your introduction to Wittgenstein, but for someone with a decent familiarity, it's a worthy contribution to the field.
Rather, the through-line seems to be someone struggling to communicate how he sees the world, and trying out different techniques to reach beyond his own subjectivity when others stubbornly refuse to share it. It does seem like reentering the hurly-burly of academia gave LW more appreciation for persuasion, but honestly, his proclivity to shout down contrary views seemed to survive to the end. There's no tidy story of linear growth here. There are many statements in PI that belong on the "esotericist" side of the ledger, if we're stuck dichotomizing with Klagge's categories. Klagge seems to recognize this implicitly, and his definitions of the two ends of the pole are watered down too much to stake out any truly controversial position.
That said, I don't really care. Because even Klagge seems half-hearted in his commitment to the thesis, and instead spends many pages just musing on more interesting tangents and influences on LW. For me personally, the sections on Kierkegaard were the most interesting, and I'd love to see Klagge expand that into a full-length treatment. Klagge traces LW's familiarity with SK (and indeed, Kierkegaard appears to have featured in the canon of the entire Wittgenstein family), and also articulates where their projects converged and diverged. Although LW wrestled with ethical doubts on SK's methods of indirect communication, it's clear that it had significant influence on his own approach. Both thinkers certainly brought more of a literary approach to philosophy than many of the schematizers and pedants that occupy the field. Klagge has interesting things to say about that too, with some excellent material on the ancient struggle between philosophy and poetry. He largely wants to paint poetry as a persuasive art that wins its converts through affective mimesis rather than argumentation, which ties to LW's efforts to shift the movements of thought in his readers.
In terms of organization, this book is a bit of a muddle. The chapters almost read like standalone papers, and the same handful of passages get quoted (in full...) multiple times. Like, an absurd amount sometimes, where passages get repeated on adjacent pages. It gives the text a bit of a slap-dash feel, but I didn't consider it fatal to the project. I do feel like Klagge is really trying to understand LW as a person and a thinker. Even when he is grinding the axe of his (dubious) thesis, it's throwing off sparks of insight. This should definitely not be your introduction to Wittgenstein, but for someone with a decent familiarity, it's a worthy contribution to the field.
May 1, 2024
In spite of its startling title, Klagge's "Wittgenstein's Artillery Philosophy as Poetry" sanctions my own view that Wittgenstein's mistress was language. Spawned by his war time (and decorated) service in the Austrian Army during WWI as a artillery spotter, Wittgenstein morphed the destructive effect of artillery fire into the supportive, rhetorical effect of "poetry". (I put the word 'poetry' in scare quotes because the German word 'dichtung' finds little comfort in the English word 'poetry'. Klagge explains this very well.) Simply put, that means that Wittgenstein ever looked (spotted) for the right words and the best forms (artillery pieces) to express, to communicate his ideas to his students. Do I need to say that Wittgenstein's ideas were/ are still challenging?
Klagge divides Wittgenstein's response to this challenge to his attitude towards readers as passing from an 'esoteric' stance, exemplified by the" Tractatus", into an 'evangelical' stance, exemplified by "Philosophical Investigations". Klagge very helpfully provides a list (A-G) of Wittgenstein's 'Aims'(p63-68) and 15 examples plus discussions of his 'poetry'. (Ch6) The 'poetry' ranges from single words such as, "Games" to aphorisms such as, "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him". It also includes symbols such as the, "beetle in the box" and parables such as, the "Parable of Seed" and the "Parable of the Wall". Of particular interest, at least to me for two reasons, however, was the parable of "Showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle".(p119-125) Reason 1-The light that showed Wittgenstein the way out of his "esoteric" fly bottle was his realization that it isn't reason or belief that blocks the grasp of understanding but rather it is the resistance of the will. And to overcome that resistance, a philosopher must call in the heavy artillery. That is the rhetorical force of the non- cognitive; a force that persuades rather than commands. From this compost heap of crawling common and everyday significances Wittgenstein's evangelical approach grew. Reason 2- As I read Klagge's discussion of the fly bottle, the image, the memory of Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello" stuck me dumb or perhaps raptured me off to some nameless height of self-satisfaction. In short, Costello, because of her obsession (for attaining the light), constantly banged her head against the fly bottle. Worse, when in the last chapter (and where on earth is that? Is she in some sort after life? Or brain in vat? Or in a philosophical thought experiment?) she is given a way out of the bottle, but her will was blind to the solution offered her. And there in this odd circumstance she no doubt remains.
In a sense, Klagge's book preaches to the choir of all those that believe in the power of literature to move readers towards moral/ethical pulchritude. And, perhaps more importantly it opens up access and passage to understanding the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
Klagge divides Wittgenstein's response to this challenge to his attitude towards readers as passing from an 'esoteric' stance, exemplified by the" Tractatus", into an 'evangelical' stance, exemplified by "Philosophical Investigations". Klagge very helpfully provides a list (A-G) of Wittgenstein's 'Aims'(p63-68) and 15 examples plus discussions of his 'poetry'. (Ch6) The 'poetry' ranges from single words such as, "Games" to aphorisms such as, "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him". It also includes symbols such as the, "beetle in the box" and parables such as, the "Parable of Seed" and the "Parable of the Wall". Of particular interest, at least to me for two reasons, however, was the parable of "Showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle".(p119-125) Reason 1-The light that showed Wittgenstein the way out of his "esoteric" fly bottle was his realization that it isn't reason or belief that blocks the grasp of understanding but rather it is the resistance of the will. And to overcome that resistance, a philosopher must call in the heavy artillery. That is the rhetorical force of the non- cognitive; a force that persuades rather than commands. From this compost heap of crawling common and everyday significances Wittgenstein's evangelical approach grew. Reason 2- As I read Klagge's discussion of the fly bottle, the image, the memory of Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello" stuck me dumb or perhaps raptured me off to some nameless height of self-satisfaction. In short, Costello, because of her obsession (for attaining the light), constantly banged her head against the fly bottle. Worse, when in the last chapter (and where on earth is that? Is she in some sort after life? Or brain in vat? Or in a philosophical thought experiment?) she is given a way out of the bottle, but her will was blind to the solution offered her. And there in this odd circumstance she no doubt remains.
In a sense, Klagge's book preaches to the choir of all those that believe in the power of literature to move readers towards moral/ethical pulchritude. And, perhaps more importantly it opens up access and passage to understanding the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
April 22, 2026
I am by no means a Wittgensteinian nor particularly familiar with the work of Wittgenstein besides from a brief and limited exposure in introductory philosophy courses during my undergraduate degree. However, in these courses the image that we receive of Wittgenstein is at once intimidating but also strikingly dry. As such, it never inspired much interest in myself or my peers to look further into Wittgenstein apart from appropriated concepts present in contemporary works.
To be honest, I picked up this book as an act of procrastination from my graduate thesis. Working in a very different area of philosophy, I was ambitiously hoping reading something completely unrelated to my work would spark some inspiration. Though, I really could not anticipate how much this book has impacted me. I am leaving this with such a refreshing view of philosophy, of philosophical methodology, and of the truly great philosopher that is Ludwig Wittgenstein. I have not much to say on the content of the book besides finding the chapter on parables immensely moving and compelling. I do tire of explaining and grow weary of justification, and find comfort in the aims of Wittgenstein in this regard especially.
To be honest, I picked up this book as an act of procrastination from my graduate thesis. Working in a very different area of philosophy, I was ambitiously hoping reading something completely unrelated to my work would spark some inspiration. Though, I really could not anticipate how much this book has impacted me. I am leaving this with such a refreshing view of philosophy, of philosophical methodology, and of the truly great philosopher that is Ludwig Wittgenstein. I have not much to say on the content of the book besides finding the chapter on parables immensely moving and compelling. I do tire of explaining and grow weary of justification, and find comfort in the aims of Wittgenstein in this regard especially.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 5, 2026
Good book that details an understudied but no less important aspect of Wittgenstein's life and philosophy. However, I wish it focused more on the religious dimension of Wittgenstein's poetry. Wittgenstein said he saw philosophy from the "religious point of view" and certainly there's much material that's relevant there in regards to this book.
On Certainty, §612
"I said I would 'combat' the other man,-but wouldn't I give him reasons? Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.)"
On Certainty, §612
July 11, 2023
Me parece que Klagge presenta ideas y perspectivas muy interesantes y bien hiladas sobre la filosofía de Wittgenstein, pero me resulta muy repetitivo a ratos y pienso que propone muchos ejemplos que no clarifican ni ilustran sino que, más bien, entorpecen por una intención de decir lo que puede mostrarse. No es una mala obra si se conoce algo de Wittgenstein, pero me da la sensación de que no consigue comunicar la relevancia de la visión propuesta.
January 11, 2026
For a work of philosophy the ideas in this book are nothing short of dazzling. Yet what stayed with me was the way the author put into words something I had long felt but never managed to articulate: why Wittgenstein’s work draws me in so powerfully.
The book’s real achievement lies in the clarity with which it explains Wittgenstein’s method for communicating about metaphysical matters without collapsing into brittle theory. The author shows how Wittgenstein’s “artillery” consisted less in arguments meant to secure compliance than in carefully aimed remarks, comparisons, and literary strategies designed to work on the reader: loosening, reshaping attention, and changing what a problem looks like from the inside.
Reading this, I recognized my own experience of Wittgenstein. A feeling that his philosophy operates as a kind of disciplined poetry, persuasive in the deepest sense because it alters one’s orientation rather than merely adding new beliefs.
That vision not only deepened my understanding of Wittgenstein but also suggested a compelling model for writing far beyond philosophy. In short, this book goes a long way toward explaining why Wittgenstein continues to mean so much to me on a personal level.
I am clearly biased - but it is an unqualified 5 stars from me.
The book’s real achievement lies in the clarity with which it explains Wittgenstein’s method for communicating about metaphysical matters without collapsing into brittle theory. The author shows how Wittgenstein’s “artillery” consisted less in arguments meant to secure compliance than in carefully aimed remarks, comparisons, and literary strategies designed to work on the reader: loosening, reshaping attention, and changing what a problem looks like from the inside.
Reading this, I recognized my own experience of Wittgenstein. A feeling that his philosophy operates as a kind of disciplined poetry, persuasive in the deepest sense because it alters one’s orientation rather than merely adding new beliefs.
That vision not only deepened my understanding of Wittgenstein but also suggested a compelling model for writing far beyond philosophy. In short, this book goes a long way toward explaining why Wittgenstein continues to mean so much to me on a personal level.
I am clearly biased - but it is an unqualified 5 stars from me.
February 11, 2024
This 2021 work on how Wittgenstein sought to write philosophy as poetry. Klagge argues that Wittgenstein moved from an esoteric mode to an evangelical mode. Shortly I will read his ‘Wittgenstein in Exile’ (2011). Then possibly his ‘Simply Wittgenstein’ (2016) &nhis ‘Tractatus in Context: The Essential Background for Appreciating Wittgenstein’ (2022).
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