| 22 |
| 5.3 Every proposition is the result of truth operations on elementary propositions. |
| Gretl's house finally completed, revitalized by Brouwer's lecture, Wittgenstein resolves to return to England. The announcement causes mixed reactions among Ludwig's former colleagues. John Maynard Keynes: "Am I strong enough? Perhaps if I do not work between now and then, I shall be."
January 18, 1928, Ludwig returns to Cambridge. Keynes: "Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train." He is elected an honorary member, an "Angel," of the elite Apostles, a society he had rejected during his undergraduate stay. His official status: advanced student reading for a Ph.D., Frank Ramsey his supervisor. Ludwig swims uncertainly in the Apostolic Bloomsbury flow. He is brutally rude to Lydia Keynes; stalks out of a lunch when the banter turns to sex. Women unsettle him. Frances Partridge: "In mixed company his coversation was often trivial in the extreme, and larded with feeble jokes accompanied by a wintry smile." Not all are pleased with the Wittgenstein cult. Undergraduate Julian Bell: "In every company he shouts us down, And stops our sentence stuttering with his own; Unceasing argues, harsh, irate and loud, Sure that he's right, and of his rightness proud." He again keeps a diary. Ludwig: "I am wandering around with great restlessness, but around what point of equilibrium I do not know." |