Élise Marrou, a former student of the École normale supérieure (Ulm), agrégée in philosophy, author of a doctoral thesis on the persistence of the problem of solipsism in Wittgenstein’s thought, and assistant professor (maître de conférences) at Sorbonne university, did not expect to confront the philosopher’s wartime reflections quite so literally. Trapped for several days in the United Arab Emirates amid a sudden regional crisis, she was among roughly 300 passengers awaiting evacuation under tense and uncertain conditions, before the French embassy welcomed them, the Air and Space Force organized the evacuation, and the base at Istres under Colonel Estève, with the help of the SUAD university.

How does this frightening experience in the Emirates shed light on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections in his World War I notebooks?

EM: In a way, it was Wittgenstein’s war notebooks that helped me, if not to overcome my fear, then at least to find ways to resist panic during the nearly week-long exposure to missile and drone attacks that took place day and night. I would like to point out from the outset that in the reflections that follow, I am well aware that this period was very brief (five days and five nights) and much more limited than the exposure experienced by most of the people who are victims of this war today. Indeed, in his notebooks written during the First World War, particularly from 1916 onwards when, at his request, he was sent to the front, Wittgenstein’s thoughts changed in tone: his writing most often reflected thoughts drawn from his readings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. They focus on the status of ethics as a condition of the world and on the subject as the bearer of values. For the Viennese philosopher, thought provokes a gradual and profound ethical transformation in us, breaking with the common hierarchy of goods and the common distinction between means and ends. It is a process of liberation that clarifies what we do and thereby charts the path we follow. For the author of Investigations, entering into philosophy is not the result of a decision, but of coming up against a problem and the need to find a way out of it. Here, finding a way out always means finding a way out through thought and the mind (Geist) (1). When Wittgenstein asks himself, “How can man be happy anyway, since he cannot ward off the misery of the world?”, he answers bluntly: “Precisely through the life of understanding” (Notebooks, August 13, 1916).

Does it test the limits of language, a central theme in Wittgenstein’s work?

EM: These extreme experiences test the limits of language and those of the world insofar as it redefines them. Let’s start with the limits........

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