Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
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Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was a person.
References
2015
- (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein Retrieved:2015-5-13.
- Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ([1] ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929–1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge.[2] During his lifetime he published just one slim book, the 75-page Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), one article, one book review and a children's dictionary. [3] His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. Philosophical Investigations appeared as a book in 1953 and by the end of the century it was considered an important modern classic. [4] Philosopher Bertrand Russell described Wittgenstein as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating". [5] Born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families, he inherited a large fortune from his father in 1913. He gave some considerable sums to poor artists. In a period of severe personal depression after the first World War, he then gave away his entire fortune to his brothers and sisters. [6] [7] Three of his brothers committed suicide, with Wittgenstein contemplating it too. [8] He 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 hitting children when they made mistakes in mathematics; and working as a hospital porter during World War II in London where he told patients not to take the drugs they were prescribed while largely managing to keep secret the fact that he was one of the world's most famous philosophers. [9] He described philosophy, however, as "the only work that gives me real satisfaction." [10] His philosophy is often divided into an early period, exemplified by the Tractatus, and a later period, articulated in the Philosophical Investigations. The early Wittgenstein was concerned with the logical relationship between propositions and the world and believed that by providing an account of the logic underlying this relationship, he had solved all philosophical problems. The later Wittgenstein 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] Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are diverging interpretations of his thought. In the words of his friend and colleague Georg Henrik von Wright:
He was of the opinion... that his ideas were generally misunderstood and distorted even by those who professed to be his disciples. He doubted he would be better understood in the future. He once said he felt as though he was writing for people who would think in a different way, breathe a different air of life, from that of present-day men.[12]
- Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ([1] ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929–1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge.[2] During his lifetime he published just one slim book, the 75-page Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), one article, one book review and a children's dictionary. [3] His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. Philosophical Investigations appeared as a book in 1953 and by the end of the century it was considered an important modern classic. [4] Philosopher Bertrand Russell described Wittgenstein as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating". [5] Born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families, he inherited a large fortune from his father in 1913. He gave some considerable sums to poor artists. In a period of severe personal depression after the first World War, he then gave away his entire fortune to his brothers and sisters. [6] [7] Three of his brothers committed suicide, with Wittgenstein contemplating it too. [8] He 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 hitting children when they made mistakes in mathematics; and working as a hospital porter during World War II in London where he told patients not to take the drugs they were prescribed while largely managing to keep secret the fact that he was one of the world's most famous philosophers. [9] He described philosophy, however, as "the only work that gives me real satisfaction." [10] His philosophy is often divided into an early period, exemplified by the Tractatus, and a later period, articulated in the Philosophical Investigations. The early Wittgenstein was concerned with the logical relationship between propositions and the world and believed that by providing an account of the logic underlying this relationship, he had solved all philosophical problems. The later Wittgenstein 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] Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are diverging interpretations of his thought. In the words of his friend and colleague Georg Henrik von Wright:
- ↑ "Wittgenstein". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
- ↑ Dennett, Daniel. "Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosopher", Time magazine, 29 March 1999.
- ↑ For his publications during his lifetime, see Monk, R., How to read Wittgenstein. W.W. Norton & Company. 2005, p. 5. *For the number of words published in his lifetime, see Stern, David. "The Bergen Electronic Edition of Wittgenstein's Nachlass", The European Journal of Philosophy. Vol 18, issue 3, September 2010.
- ↑ A poll among some 400 american university and college philosophy teachers ranked it at number one in 1999; see Lackey, Douglas "What Are the Modern Classics? The Baruch Poll of Great Philosophy in the Twentieth Century", Philosophical Forum. 30 (4), December 1999, pp. 329–346. For a summary of the poll, see here [1]. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
- ↑ For the Russell quote, see McGuinness, Brian. Wittgenstein: A Life : Young Ludwig 1889–1921. University of California Press, 1988, p. 118.
- ↑ When his father died in 1913 and Ludwig inherited a considerable fortune... Then, after the First World War, in which he fought as a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian army, he gave away his entire fortune to his brothers and sisters and, plagued by depression, sought refuge in Lower Austria, where he worked as an ordinary primary school teacher. [Goethe Institute http://www.goethe.de/ges/phi/prt/en2341144.htm]
- ↑ Duffy, Bruce. "The do-it-yourself life of Ludwig Wittgenstein", The New York Times, 13 November 1988, p. 4/10. *For his selling his furniture, see "Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus and Teaching", Cambridge Wittgenstein archive. Retrieved 4 September 2010.
- ↑ For the brothers' suicides, see Waugh, Alexander. "The Wittgensteins: Viennese whirl", The Daily Telegraph, 30 August 2008. *Also see Gottlieb, Anthony. "A Nervous Splendor", The New Yorker, 9 April 2009.
- ↑ Monk, R., Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Free Press, 1990, pp. 232–233, 431. *For his commendation, see Waugh, A., The House of Wittgenstein: a Family at War. Random House of Canada, 2008, p. 114.
- ↑ Malcolm, (Additional note) p. 84.
- ↑ Malcolm, p. 6.
2002
- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/
- QUOTE: Considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein played a central, if controversial, role in 20th-century analytic philosophy. He continues to influence current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture. Originally, there were two commonly recognized stages of Wittgenstein's thought — the early and the later — both of which were taken to be pivotal in their respective periods. In more recent scholarship, this division has been questioned: some interpreters have claimed a unity between all stages of his thought, while others talk of a more nuanced division, adding stages such as the middle Wittgenstein and the third Wittgenstein. Still, it is commonly acknowledged that the early Wittgenstein is epitomized in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, he provided new insights into the relations between world, thought and language and thereby into the nature of philosophy. It is the later Wittgenstein, mostly recognized in the Philosophical Investigations, who took the more revolutionary step in critiquing all of traditional philosophy including its climax in his own early work. The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems.
1953
- (Wittgenstein, 1953) ⇒ Ludwig Wittgenstein. (1953). “Philosophical Investigations."
1921
- (Wittgenstein, 1921) ⇒ Ludwig Wittgenstein. (1953). “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus."