Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein [IPA 'l?dv?Ð"§ 'jo?z?f 'jo?hann 'v?tg?n?ta?n] (April 26, 1889 Ð'- April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who contributed several groundbreaking works to modern philosophy, primarily on the foundations of logic and the philosophy of language. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. [1]

Although numerous collections from Wittgenstein's notebooks, papers, and lectures have been published since his death, he published only one philosophical book in his own lifetime Ð'-- the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921, while studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, under the supervision of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. With the completion of the Tractatus, for which he was awarded a Ph.D., Wittgenstein believed he had solved all the problems of philosophy, and he abandoned his studies, working as a schoolteacher, a gardener at a monastery, and an architect on his sister's new house in Vienna. However, in 1929, he returned to Cambridge and took a teaching position there, subsequently revising some of his earlier work. His development of a new philosophical method and a new understanding of language culminated in his second magnum opus, the Philosophical Investigations, which was published posthumously.

Wittgenstein's early work was deeply influenced by Russell's work on logic, by his earlier brief study with the German logician Gottlob Frege, and by Arthur Schopenhauer. When the Tractatus was published, it was taken up as a major influence by the Vienna Circle positivists. However, Wittgenstein did not consider himself part of that school and alleged that logical positivism involved grave misunderstandings of the Tractatus.

Both his early and later work have been major influences in the development of analytic philosophy, especially in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and action theory. Former students and colleagues who carried on Wittgenstein's methods included Gilbert Ryle, Friedrich Waismann, Norman Malcolm, G. E. M. Anscombe, Rush Rhees, Georg Henrik von Wright and Peter Geach. Contemporary philosophers heavily influenced by Wittgenstein include James Conant, Michael Dummett, Peter Hacker, Stanley Cavell, and Saul Kripke.

Contents [hide]

1 Life

1.1 Early life

1.2 World War I

1.3 The "lost years": life after the Tractatus

1.4 Returning to Cambridge

2 Work

2.1 The Tractatus

2.2 Intermediary works

2.3 The Philosophical Investigations

2.4 Later work

2.5 Important publications

3 Quotations

4 Works about Wittgenstein

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

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Life

He was born as Ludwig Joseph Johann Wittgenstein in Vienna. His paternal grandparents, after they had converted from Judaism to Protestantism, moved from Saxony in Germany to Vienna in Austria-Hungary. Here is where Ludwig's father, Karl Wittgenstein, gained wealth and esteem as one of the leading businessmen in the iron and steel industry. Ludwig's mother Leopoldine (nÐ"©e Kalmus) was a Catholic, but her father was also of Jewish descent. Ludwig was baptized in a Catholic church and was given a Catholic burial by his friends when he died, although he was not a practising Catholic.

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Early life

Ludwig grew up as the youngest of eight children in a household that provided an intensely stimulating environment. Ludwig's parents were both very musical and all their children were artistically and intellectually gifted. Karl Wittgenstein was a leading patron of the arts, and the Wittgenstein house hosted many figures of high culture Ð'-- above all, musicians. The family was often visited by artists such as Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. Ludwig's brother Paul Wittgenstein went on to become a world-famous concert pianist, even after losing his right arm in World War I. Ludwig himself did not have prodigious musical talent, but his devotion to music remained vitally important to him throughout his life Ð'-- he made frequent use of musical examples and metaphors in his philosophical writings, and was said to be unusually adept at whistling lengthy and detailed musical passages. A less fortunate family trait was a tendency to intense self-criticism, to the point of depression and suicidal tendencies. Three of his four brothers committed suicide.

Until 1903, Ludwig was educated at home; after that, he began three years of schooling at the Realschule in Linz, a school emphasizing technical topics. Adolf Hitler was a student there at the same time, and the two (both 14) can be seen near each other in a school photograph of all the students. (It is a matter of controversy whether Hitler and Wittgenstein knew each other at all, and if so whether either had any memory of the other. See below.)

In 1906, Ludwig took up studying mechanical engineering in Berlin, and in 1908 he went to the University of Manchester to study for his doctorate in engineering. For this purpose he registered as a research student in an engineering laboratory. There he did research on the behavior of kites in the upper atmosphere. From that he moved to aeronautical research on the design of a propeller with small jet engines on the end of its blades. He successfully designed and tested a prototype of this design.

During his research Wittgenstein became interested in the foundations of mathematics, particularly after reading Bertrand Russell's Principles of Mathematics.

He studied in Germany briefly under Gottlob Frege who, in the preceding decades, had laid the foundations of modern mathematical logic. Frege urged him to read the work of Bertrand Russell, who had discovered certain crucial contradictions in Frege's own theories.

In 1912, Wittgenstein went to the University of Cambridge and studied with Russell at Trinity College. He made a great impression on Russell and