Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein in 1929
Born(1889-04-26)26 April 1889
Neuwaldegg, Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died29 April 1951(1951-04-29) (aged 62)
Cambridge, England
Nationality
Education
Notable work[6]
Relatives
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
ThesisTractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1929)
Doctoral advisorFrank Plumpton Ramsey
Notable studentsG. E. M. Anscombe, Rush Rhees, Casimir Lewy,[3] Reuben Goodstein,[4] Norman Malcolm, Alice Ambrose, Stephan Körner, Maurice O'Connor Drury, Margaret MacDonald, Friedrich Waismann, John Wisdom, Morris Lazerowitz, Yorick Smythies
Main interests
Notable ideas
Military career
AllegianceAustria-Hungary
Service/branchAustro-Hungarian Army
Years of service1914–1918
RankLieutenant
UnitAustrian 7th Army
Battles/warsWorld War I
Awards
Website
Signature

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (/ˈvɪtɡənʃtn, -stn/ VIT-gən-s(h)tyne;[7] German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈjoːzɛf 'joːhan ˈvɪtɡn̩ʃtaɪn]; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.[8]

From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge.[8] In spite of his position, during his entire life only one book of his philosophy was published, the 75-page Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Logical-Philosophical Treatise, 1921), which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929); a book review; and a children's dictionary.[a][b] His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. A 1999 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".[9]

His philosophy is often divided into an early period, exemplified by the Tractatus, and a later period, articulated primarily in the Philosophical Investigations.[10] 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.[11]

Born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families, he inherited a fortune from his father in 1913. Before World War I, he "made a very generous financial bequest to a group of poets and artists chosen by Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of Der Brenner, from artists in need. These included Trakl as well as Rainer Maria Rilke and the architect Adolf Loos."[12] Later, in a period of severe personal depression after World War I, he gave away his remaining fortune to his brothers and sisters.[13][14] Three of his four older brothers died by separate acts of suicide. Wittgenstein left academia several times: serving as an officer on the front line during World War I, where he was 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; working during World War II as a hospital porter in London; and working as a hospital laboratory technician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne. He later expressed remorse for these incidents, and spent the remainder of his life lecturing and attempting to prepare a second manuscript for publication, which was published posthumously as the hugely influential Philosophical Investigations.

  1. ^ GLOCK, HANS-JOHANN (2004). "Was Wittgenstein an Analytic Philosopher?". Metaphilosophy. 35 (4): 419–444. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9973.2004.00329.x. ISSN 0026-1068. JSTOR 24439710.
  2. ^ Rodych, Victor. "Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 ed.).
  3. ^ P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy (1996), pp. 77 and 138.
  4. ^ Nuno Venturinha, The Textual Genesis of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Routledge, 2013, p. 39.
  5. ^ "documentArchiv.de – Verordnung über die deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit im Lande Österreich (3 July 1938)". documentarchiv.de. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  6. ^ Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958) [1953]. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: MacMillan. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  7. ^ "Wittgenstein". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  8. ^ a b Dennett, Daniel (29 March 1999). "Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosopher". Time. Archived from the original on 16 October 2007.
  9. ^ Lackey, Douglas P. (1999). "What Are the Modern Classics? The Baruch Poll of Great Philosophy in the Twentieth Century". The Philosophical Forum. 30 (4): 329–346. doi:10.1111/0031-806X.00022. ISSN 1467-9191.
  10. ^ His mentor Bertrand Russell was likely the first to coin this distinction in Wittgenstein's work.
  11. ^ Proops, Ian (2001). "The New Wittgenstein: A Critique" (PDF). European Journal of Philosophy. 9 (3): 375–404. doi:10.1111/1468-0378.00142. Retrieved 16 February 2018.
  12. ^ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Private Notebooks: 1914–1916 (edited and translated by Marjorie Perloff), New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2022, p. 79.
  13. ^ "Ludwig Wittgenstein or the Philosophy of Austere Lines". Goethe Institute. Archived from the original on 2 March 2011. When his father died in 1913 ... Ludwig inherited a considerable fortune.... Then, after World War I, in which he fought as a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian army, he gave away his entire [remaining] fortune to his brothers and sisters and, plagued by depression, sought refuge in Lower Austria, where he worked as a primary school teacher.
  14. ^ Duffy, Bruce (13 November 1988). "The Do-It-Yourself Life of Ludwig Wittgenstein". The New York Times.


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