Fourth Meditation
What Is Freedom?
A Reflection on the Rational WillILet me begin again with a quotation, this one an anecdote re-
corded by Maurice Drury recounting an exchange between
himself and Ludwig Wittgenstein:
DRURY: I had been reading Origen before. Ori-
gen taught that at the end of time here would be a
final restitution of all things. That even Satan and
the fallen angels would be restored to their former
glory. This was a conception that appealed to me-
but it was at once condemned as heretical.
WITTGENSTEIN: Of course it was rejected. It would
make nonsense of everything else. If what we do
now is to make no difference in the end, then all the
seriousness of life is done away with. Your religious
ideas have always seemed to me more Greek than
biblical. Whereas my thoughts are one hundred per
cent Hebraic.
(Maurice O'Connor Drury,
Recollections of Wittgenstein)