Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. |
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| wikipedia:: Ludwig Wittgenstein |
#form/thought/analysis Likely the most influential philosopher of the 20th century, although intriguingly it seems no one has been able to pick up where he left off. This makes his bold claim that he had "solved" all philosophical problems that much more compelling. Made major advancements in logic and the philosophy of language. Tried to establish the capabilities and limits of language and thus what the limits of philosophy itself are. Claimed that language's potential meaning is coincident with a semantically external theory of meaning as use via embedded and contextually-mediated forms of life that determine specific senses/definitions of words and gestures via how people actually use language (which he called "language games"). This formulation of language defines both what can have meaning and what can't. Although that boundary evolved along with his notions of quietism and his seemingly paradoxical conclusion that once one understands the philosophy he is advancing, they should "...throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it".
sep:: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
iep:: Wittgenstein, Ludwig | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A survey among American university and college teachers ranked the Investigations as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy, standing out as "the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations".[22]
His philosophy is often divided into an early period, exemplified by the Tractatus, and a later period, articulated primarily in the Philosophical Investigations.[23] The "early Wittgenstein" was concerned with the logical relationship between propositions and the world, and he believed that by providing an account of the logic underlying this relationship, he had solved all philosophical problems. The "later Wittgenstein", however, rejected many of the assumptions of the Tractatus, arguing that the meaning of words is best understood as their use within a given language game.[24]
Ideas
Life
- Principled person from a young age, despite being from an extremely wealthy family. Eventually gave away most of his fortune.
- Before World War I, he "made a very generous financial bequest to a group of poets and artists..." including Rilke
- Later, in a period of severe personal depression after World War I, he gave away his remaining fortune to his brothers and sisters.
- Three of his four older brothers died by separate acts of suicide.
- left academia several times
- decorated a number of times for his courage; teaching in schools in remote Austrian villages, where he encountered controversy for using sometimes violent corporal punishment on girls and a boy (the Haidbauer incident) especially during mathematics classes
- Frank Ramsey relationship
- Annotations - Cheryl Misak on Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein
- guest speaker, paraphrasing Frank Ramsey: "ludwig is in the position the child at the breakfast table, where the parent says to the child, say, breakfast, and the child says, can't and the parent says, can't say what? And the child says, can't say breakfast."
- Critiques Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and helped move Wittgenstein to what we call "later" Wittgenstein
- Annotations - Cheryl Misak on Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Early Wittgenstein
Later Wittgenstein
Tractatus
Philosophical Investigations
Related
Excerpts
- Accept and endure
- ~'Whereof one cannot speak...'
- ~'nothing works just as good as something about which nothing can be said...'
- If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
- a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said.
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