While reading Ray Monk's biography of the great modern

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1 Carl Ginsburg FELDENKRAIS &WITTGENSTEIN ABSTRACT While reading Ray Monk's biography of the great modern philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, I was struck by certain parallels in his way of thinking to that of Feldenkrais. I searched my notes of the San Francisco Training and indeed found that Feldenkrais made reference to Wittgenstein. In this paper I sketch out these parallels and show that Feldenkrais used a Wittgensteinian approach to solving problems through examining and then clarifying the language in which problems are expressed. I conclude with a corroboration frommoshe's old friend Franz Wurmthat Feldenkrais was indeed famuiar with the work of Wittgenstein. ON JUNE 14,1976 we began the second year of our training with Feldenkrais. This is what I wrote in my notebook on that day: The brain is uncommitted tabula rasa but only for humans at birth. Animals must see and hear everything. In human society only what is important comes through. The uncommitted brain has to do with learning. The committed parts of the brain don't learn. Being adjusted to the environment reduces our capacity to do a different thing. Logic as we use it is a restriction of thinking. Logic has nothing to do with learning, but with person to person communication. If you put words together with the proper syntax and logical organization, etc., you end up saying what you have already said or thought. The noncommitted brain has become committed. Wittgenstein spent a lifetime to show that what you say is not what you meant. So language restricts thinking. You lose the ability to say it another way. In all discoveries you must stop yourself fromfunctioning in a routine way. We are not, however, going above nature No ^we are trying to release ourselves of the shackles. These are my notes. They must be close to what Feldenkrais said. They certainly reflect the essence of what he was trying to get us to do. But who was this Wittgenstein that he mentions? And what relation is there between Wittgenstein and Feldenkrais? Is it important? My own knowledge about Wittgenstein was very limited. I knew that he was born in Vienna and taught philosophy at Cambridge University in England during the nineteen thirties, that he wrote a very difficult 4

2 book called the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a book that influenced the philosophical school of logical positivism, and that he supposedly turned in a different direction in his later work to devote himself to the clarification of ordinary language as a way of doing philosophy. And, oh yes, obscure as he was to most of us, he was considered the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. During the summer of stayed with a friend in England. On the bookshelf in my bedroomi spotted a large book entitled, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, written by an English philosopher, Ray Monk. For days afterwards, I carried the book with me, devouring another morsel whenever I had a moment. At night I read into the early morning. Here was a Wittgenstein who, the more I read about him, became, in my eyes, a brother to Feldenkrais. Ray Monk presented a very different view of this man than what I had gained previously about himfroman academic viewpoint. Monk delved into many of Wittgenstein's private letters, and other private sources to create a picture of Wittgenstein integrating his life and philosophical work. Here was a passionate man, captivated by questions that he didn't want, but refused to ignore, a man who lived out his ethical concerns as authentically as he could, and whose written work concerned only that part of life and thinking that was least important to himself. It was no wonder that, as Monk documents, he beheved himself so misunderstood by his friends and followers. Feldenkrais also believed himself misunderstood even by his closest disciples. He, like Wittgenstein, was after a new way of thinking, a way actually to clear the ground so as to create a solid foundation for action. On the surface though, Feldenkrais was a very different sort of man. As a sportsman, a Judo man, an inventor, an innovator of techniques to improve human functioning, his life emphasis was on acting and doing. Until he injured himself, he was athletic and physically active. A photograph of himin his thirties shows himin boxer trunks, a short, compact, and muscular man, thick neck and intense eyes, with his right fist ready to punch. He was never an academic. He actively engaged in helping other human beings achieve things that seemed impossible, such as guiding a severely cerebral palsied child to learn to crawl and hold his head up. He tolerated language in so far as he needed it to communicate his ideas, relied on experiential lessons to communicate the essence of what he was up to, and still could talk for what seemed like forever. He had litde tolerance for the habitual in human behavior, and abhorred the kind of intellectual activity that resulted in what he called word shuffling. He wanted to promote his ideas and way of thinking to the largest number of people possible. He was willing to try this with hundreds of people at a time. Wittgenstein seemed to have led a more contemplative life. Photographs show himas a small, good looking man, and not physical in any sense. He was reclusive. At times he hid out in a cottage in Norway. During the nineteen twenties, he taught grade school children in small rural villages in Austria, keeping only minimal contact with his intellectual friends. When he taught at Cambridge, his classes were small, no more than ten specially selected people. On the other hand, during World War I, he volunteered for active duty at the front. In Vienna after the war, he helped design a house for his sister and designed all the interior

3 hardware according to strictly functional design concepts. Depressive and suicidal at times, he had few really close relationships, and these were with men. After the Tractatus, he published nothing further in his lifetime. Nevertheless, his notebooks yielded a number of very original books that were edited by colleagues. One last important thing to mention is that after the World War, he gave away the very large fortune he inherited fromhis father and lived the rest of his life in humble circumstances. Feldenkrais was frombaranovichi, a small town near Minsk, where he grew up in an orthodox Jewish household, isolated fromthe cultural centers of Europe. Wittgenstein grew up in a household of riches and culture, where the most current ideas of the time were discussed. The Wittgenstein family had converted fromjudaismyears before, and were integrated into the society and culture of Vienna. Nevertheless, the Second World War led themboth to seek refuge in England fromthe dangers of Nazism. What were the commonalities? Both men valued life. They both extolled a life of doing and creating. Wittgenstein urged his philosophy students to do anything, even work at a store, as a preference to becoming a professional philosopher, or teacher of philosophy. They were both profoundly anti-theoretical in their approach. Each, in his own way, developed a methodology of exploring and clarifying questions, in preference to creating answers to give to people. They were both critics of ordinary language, seeking ways to re-formthe thinking process. They were aware of the paradoxical nature of inquiry itself. Wittgenstein began his work with a study of logic. His investigations led himto conclude that logic didn't say anything. His entire effort at first was to delineate what could be said clearly and definitively. He found that what could be said and put into logical propositions were those things that were of least importance to human life. The corollary, on the other hand, was that what was most significant to life couldn't be said in any case. For him, however, what couldn't be said could be shown. What this meant was that those kinds of propositions, for example, propositions in ethics, could be demonstrated by living and acting accordingly. It is curious that the positivist philosophers after him spoke of ethical propositions, for example, as nonsensical, meaning that such statements could not be put as statements of fact. For them this put such propositions beyond the realmof interest. For Wittgenstein the reverse was true. Above all he saw, anticipating Godel's revolutionary discovery of the limitation of logic-based systems, that a symbolic systemwas incapable of commenting on itself. In the next to last proposition of his Tractatus, he wrote: My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes themas nonsensical, when he has used them as steps to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. The Tractatus is a difficult work, which focuses on the specialized theme of logic. In it Wittgenstein addressed one aspect of language, and that was to develop the picture theory of language, that is, that propositions are a kind of picture of what they describe. At first he thought that

4 the Tractatus ended the problems of philosophy; one would "see the world aright." In the end he realized that he had a far too limited idea of language, that language needed to be addressed at the level of how it was used. He began at this point to look at the question of our daily language. For he saw it was precisely here that people created the confusions that made problems of human life. And indeed that here too, philosopher's made problems in philosophy. Now he postulated that the "philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions" {Philosophical Investigations). Observing language in this way, he suggested that one had to notice how words were used in the context of actual human communication, i.e., in the concrete operations that words create. One understands the word five in this way by asking someone to go shopping and get five apples. Even in designating a thing such as a chair, there is no singular definition of the word, but an envelope of relationships between different uses of the word. A chair can refer to what one sits on at a dining table all the way to the designation of the person who directs a meeting. Wittgenstein, in shifting further to the functional and concrete, was after a practical result. His purpose was to strip away the terrible confusions he saw around himso that human beings could live more productively and harmoniously. Feldenkrais sought to end another kind of confusion, although he too observed that much of human confusion existed in the way we speak and use language. This project was his second passion. First though, he was after a way to find out how the human beings he observed, including himself, interfered with the simplest acts. He thus developed a methodology to clarify through the senses just what it is we are doing in our doing. Here in a transcribed lesson fromthe Master Moves is how he asked people to do it. I amnot going to reveal the actual movement lesson. Now, as you are, turn your chest so that your right shoulder blade doesn't touch the floor, and continue to rock. Now, which shoulder is moved? Which shoulder hinders you? Can you feel that it's your right shoulder that moves? And therefore, can you feel how the effort of the hip joint is transmitted through the spine to the right shoulder blade? The clarification, when it arises, comes about through doing and sensing. It can only arise fromthe process, not fromfurther talking about it. Feldenkrais also loved to explore abstract concepts through the creation of a concrete process, that is, to make the thinking in movement, so that the abstract idea is understood directly in experiencing one's action. To give an example fromhis training of practitioners, I cite the way he introduces the abstract idea (frombasic physics) of stability in gravity (Amherst, June 26,1980). He begins by noting that action is not possible without instability. He then asks how could one communicate the idea of stability and instability to a child who cannot yet speak. He clarifies further with concrete descriptions of how in the situation of stability one has to use great power in order to move, whereas in instability one has to invent ways to stop moving. Now he has his pupils get on the floor on elbows and knees. He asks everyone to put the knees wide, thus widening the base of one's structure, and lower the belly. He then asks everyone to move the pelvis to

5 the right leaving the elbows on the floor. After this exploration he asks the pupils to lift the right knee fromthe floor. People find that the knee can only be lifted if the pelvis moves and that in this configuration it requires effort. This is stability. The lesson goes on to explore instability and how a stable structure needs to be tipped over its base to fall. This he does by asking people to tip over fromthe position on elbows and knees and roll on the back. The Wittgenstein methodology also involved questions. The questions involved bringing a kind of reflection to a concrete situation and how one attaches language to that situation. Here is a sample proposition fromremarks on the Philosophy of Psychology: 185 When I see the milkman coming, I fetch my jug and go to meet him. Do I experience an intending? Not that I know of (Any more perhaps, than I ay to walk in order to walk.) But what if I were stopped and asked "Where are you going with that jug?" I should express my intention. The first question here, if you stop and ask yourself, is quite jarring. Why so? The second statement reveals something that is so for us. In language you express your intention when asked. But this is something quite different than experiencing an intending. But you think you experience it because when asked you say it. We go back to Feldenkrais where he makes remarks such as: words can destroy real thinking. Thinking is the object, and to begin one must be clear that our way of language expresses what is so before we communicate in language. Wittgenstein could ask questions without answering at all. The questions will do the work, if you allow yourself to truly reflect on the question: 307 "How do you know, then, that the experience which you have is the one that we call 'pain'?" The experience that I have? Which experience? How do I specify it: for myself, and for another? 308 Suppose we could learn what it is that people call a sensation, say a 'pain', and then someone taught us to express this sensation. What kind of connection with the sensation would this activity need to have, for us to be able to call it the 'expression' of that sensation? While the intent of this work on psychology addresses specific issues that Wittgenstein was directed towards in clarifying the psychological theories of his time, Wittgenstein longed to involve his method in practical projects. One chance he got was during World War II. He had the opportunity to join a research group that had been given the task of exploring wound shock. Now he could apply his approach, for he found the researchers in a quandary. There were so many separate phenomena covered by the term, wound shock, the previous published work was a confusion of contradictory data. By helping the researchers clarify that there was no such simple entity as wound shock, that the "diagnosis of shock seemed to depend on the personal views of the individual making it...", the group was able to eliminate a number of "misguided lines of research" (Monk). So too Feldenkrais could work in the same way. I am particularly reminded of the lesson (Tape 35,1981, Amherst individual lessons) where he helps an older woman who is very unsteady on her feet. Prior to seeing Feldenkrais, she had written a letter to him. He begins by saying he has a bone to pick with her and he takes the letter and

6 reads that she has written, "I must retrain my body to respond to my nerve impulses." "How do you know you have nerve impulses?" he asks. "Well I must have them... The problemis in my spinal cord. The muscles in my legs are not getting the proper impulses." Feldenkrais goes on to suggest that she repeats something told to her, but doesn't understand and she agrees. "You know only that you find difficulty in walking, but nothing about nerve impulses. I can't help impulses." He suggests that she can do something about walking. In the part of the lesson that follows he begins to guide her so that she can begin to recover some of the organization of herself (specifically how she uses the ribs, the spine, etc. in catching her balance and walking) so that in some minutes she discovers herself moving with more ease and surety. He ends this part by having her move him(to discover what it is to move freely), and then dancing with her. After commenting that she has put the emphasis on the wrong thing (now that she has experienced improvement), he goes on to say, "Neither you nor I nor God himself can help... Because He doesn't remember which impulses go where, because he has made so many of them." He goes back to the letter where she has v^tritten, "I must retrain my body to feel..." "I must retrain my body? Retrain?" He crosses out my body. "I must retrain myself, not my body. It has nothing to do with your body. It has to do with your self. You can't wauc; not your body can't walk." He then crosses out the word feel and vreites, "I must retrain myself to be like I know I was." One might easily call this a Wittgensteinian lesson. Feldenkrais also called it an Ericksonian lesson. But that was a far later influence. The whole effort at first is to help this woman clarify for herself what she needs and what is possible, thus taking away the cobwebs of misunderstanding that can only inhibit her ability to learn. To accomphsh what she really wants, she has to learn a new pattern through the agency of her immediate senses. The entire lesson can be seen as a clarification of her thinking, sensing and doing. Did Feldenkrais read Wittgenstein? I found a copy of Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics on the shelves of Feldenkrais's old apartment in Tel Aviv. But since I began this paper I have received a communication on the subject fromfranz Wurm. Franz, who is a writer, as well as director of the Feldenkrais Institute Zurich, was a friend of Feldenkrais going back to Moshe's days in England. He writes that he was first introduced to Wittgenstein by a friend at Oxford, and that some few years later, in the early fifties, he took the Tractatus to read while staying with friends and"...1 caught fire." Later, Franz reports, he was instrumental in getting Wittgenstein's Collected Works published in Germany. This is what he wrrote to me about Feldenkrais and Wittgenstein: It must have been 1953, the time of the publication of the "Investigations," that I first mentioned Wittgenstein to Moshe on the occasion of one of his stays with us here.

7 He took the two books, and the following morning I found himfurious, curious, and bewildered. "It all makes sense," he said, "but I can't make out what sense it makes." The bewilderment and irritation abated in the course of years but Wittgenstein remained a red herring in our conversations. Moshe had previously been much taken with two other books I'd given him, L. Susan Stebbing's Thinking to Some Purpose and more particularly Robert H. Thouless's Straight and Crooked Thinking, but he was dissatisfied with the limitations of both. Recalling these two books, he remarked one day that Wittgenstein had done in this, though not only in this domain what he, Moshe, hoped to achieve in his ovwi: to clear the entire basis for a solid foundation to be laid on it. There is clearly to me something of the spirit of Wittgenstein in Feldenkrais's approach. The followers of Wittgenstein did not all fully learn fromhim. Many of themtook what they needed to maintain the habits of thinking primarily in words that fitted with their academic milieu. We can take from Feldenkrais in a similar way, and indeed I myself have been lazy this way at times. I assume others have also. As an alternative, we can further the learning in that more radical way that can lead to a true shift in human thinking and doing. This means that we continue the project to clarify our senses and to make our language about what we do fit that clarity. Let me end with a quotation fromwittgenstein's notes published in the collection. Culture and Value, on the subject of teaching. It expresses, I beueve, what Feldenkrais intended, and what we must ultimately move toward. A teacher may get good, even astounding, results fromhis pupils while he is teaching themand yet not be a good teacher; because it may be that, while his pupils are directly under his influence, he raises themto a height which is not natural to them, v«thout fostering their own capabilities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again as soon as the teacher leaves the classroom. Wittgenstein puts the case in the negative and with his usual selfdeprecation says, "Perhaps this is how it is with me." I think otherwise, at least with a few of his pupils. For us, let us continue to foster our ovm and our pupil's capabilities. Here is a model for the kind of inquiry and grovrth that I would like to see in all our training groups. It requires a continued maturation on all our parts. It is indeed a necessity, if our method is to stay alive as a continued means of investigation into the condition of being human. For Feldenkrais above all desired a rigor in thinking and expressing thought, and he desired a clear and precise methodology. He did not want to leave everything to what can be done by personal insight and chance. He ceated a way of investigation so that each person could make discoveries for himself or herself. The structure of the process, however, was and is precise, and thus has a possibility to lead us to a higher common understanding.

8 REFERENCES Feldenkrais, M. (1984). The Master Moves. Meta Publications. Monk, R. (1991) Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Vintage. Wittgenstein, L. (1984). Culture and Value. Chicago. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Macmillan. Wittgenstein, L. (1988). Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. Chicago. Wittgenstein,!. (1974). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge.