ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the work of two twentieth-century writers whose work, it is argued, constitutes a contemporary version of the ancient tradition of mystical theology: the Austrian linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the American Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Drawing on the works of Wittgenstein's final creative period, it compares these with the last writings of Merton. Recent scholarly debate has tended to support the notion that after his work on the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein's last philosophical thoughts begin to launch out in new directions. Wittgenstein's later thought on the process of what he would call 'aspect-seeing' was particularly stimulated by his prolonged reflection on Jastrow's famous 'Duck-Rabbit' diagram. Radical revolutionaries and reactive conservatives both, Wittgenstein and Merton sought throughout their troubled lives the change of aspect that would afford them the existential peace they longed for and which, the chapter argues here, they both finally glimpsed in their last tantalisingly incomplete, and yet strangely prophetic, writings.