Ludwig Wittgenstein

Born: 1889

Died: 1951, at the age of 62

Country of origin: Austria (but did most of his work in England)

• Areas of focus:       Logic, Mathematics, Language, Logical Positivism
  
  
• Some of Wittgenstein's influences:       Arthur Schopenhauer, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell
  
  
• Contemporary Philosophers:       Bertrand Russell, Martin Heidegger,
  
  
• Major Books written by Wittgenstein:
  
  
  • "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (1922)
    
  • "Philosophical Investigations" (1949, published posthumously in 1953)
    
  • "Movimenti del pensiero, Movements of Thought" (his diaries, published posthumously in ####)
  
  
• Cocktail summary of Wittgenstein's main ideas:
  
  
  Ludwig's passion in life was Logic, and how it applied to Language. He argued that, prior to discussing ideas, Philosophy should first address the lack of clarity in the words used to discuss those ideas. This was part of a trend in Philosophy during the first half of the 20th century that wanted to re-invent Philosophy as a "true" science, using the scientific method to deal only with issues that can be independently verified.
  
  As in physics, subjectivity was to be avoided as much as possible. Therefore this involved throwing out any discussion of metaphysical topics, like Ethics. This was a time when Philosophy began to loose interest in the Big Ideas and focused instead on the structure of words.
  
  Using Logic to reveal the underlying structure of words, Wittgenstein argued for a so-called "atomism" theory of language. This idea argues that, underlying all of human experience and communication, there exists certain basic, indivisible facts that exist sort of like the original idea of the atom - fundamental units of meaning that cannot be divided beyond themselves. These facts form the "atoms" which build up all other meaning and understanding.
  
  Any idea that cannot be reduced down to an "atomic" meaning has no common reference-point that people can refer to (like Art or God), so it needs to be banned from Philosophical conversation. This would include any non-"atomic" topics like Ethics, Aesthetics, or Religion. More appropriate topics would be Linguistics or Mathematics.
  
  He also expressed this same idea through something he called the "picture theory of meaning", which argued that a proposition can express a fact because they both share a common "logical form" that can be empirically verified by everyone. This idea is called "picturing" because a proposition refers to a fact - the former "pictures" the latter. But this logical form cannot itself be pictured, so technically logic cannot be truly expressed, only referred to second-hand via symbols, usually words - "pictures".
  
  Since this all sounded pretty clean and tidy, Ludwig decided that since "true" Philosophy rested on Logic he therefore had solved all of the important problems of Philosophy. So he quit, and became an Elementary School teacher, a carpenter, and a gardener in Austria for many years. Why waste time studying Philosophy when the subject had been wrapped up for good?
  
  He was later coaxed out of retirement by a motley crew of Philosophers called "The Vienna Circle", who shared his goal of cleansing Philosophy of any illogical topics. In this second phase of his Philosophical career he decided that his earlier ideas were too simplistic, since they addressed language too idealistically - arguing how language "should" be used, rather than how it's actually used practically on a day-to-day basis. This analysis of how language is actually used on a practical level is sometimes called "Ordinary Language", or the so-called "Oxford School".
  
  These 2 phases of his career are often called the "Early Wittgenstein" and the "Late Wittgenstein". During this later phase he decided that, like with real atoms, there probably are no true, basic, indivisble core facts that everyone can verify. Just like how a real atom can be reduced to additional sub-units indefinitely, down to blobs of fuzzy energy, so too facts are similarly reducable down to fuzzy mush that are not a solid "bedrock" for all meaning.
  
  During this later period, he also came up with a new idea he called "Private Language": an idea that there could exist a hypothetical language whose meaning could never be understood by anyone else - a language-of-one with "atoms" that only that person could know. Such a language and associated basis of meaning, Wittgenstein argued, was impossible. All meaning has to be "external" and verifiable by others.
  
  In his mellow old age (in his 50's) Ludwig came to the conclusion that Philosophy was not a task meant to solve problems by creating theories, but was primarilly an ongoing effort to avoid confusion. Philosophy is like a Windex for the mind, cleaning up messy ideas, not an actual task meant to build a new windshield.
  
  Ludwig tried to define the line between what can be rationally discussed and what can't. His logic was sort of a brick wall between reason and any topic that transcends reason, like Ethics, Art, or Religion. He had strong views on these latter topics, but argued that Philosophy had nothing to say about them. They were to be "passed over in silence". He once said that "Ethics cannot be formulated", meaning that building a philosophical theory around any universal system of Ethics was pointless, since Ethics requires foundations other than pure, logical reason.
  
  Ludwig is often considered a "destroyer of Metaphysics", since he banished any discussion of metaphysical topics in Philosophy. He was perhaps the most famous of the Philosophers of his day who wanted to purge Philosophy of anything that couldn't be represented by Logic and Mathematics. He didn't deny their reality or value , he just argued that they fell outside of the domain of Logic. This project - called "Logical Positivism" - only lasted a few decades, since the movement concluded with the realization that there is no fundamental "bedrock" of purely logical ideas, so discussing Linguistics is really no more scientific than discussing Ethics.
  
  The first half of the 20th century saw Philosophy move in 2 broad directions. On the one hand Philosophers (mostly European Continental writers) became obsessed the abstract, Metaphysical ponderings of Existentialism, best exemplified by Martin Heidegger's mind-boggling questions of Being. On the other hand, other Philosophers (mostly the so-called British Empiricists) focused their attention on language and the meaning of symbols, since these were the tools of all Philosophical communication. This latter movement was best exemplified by Wittgenstein. He was the ultimate analyzer of language, and is the true father of all subsequent linguistic analysis by the likes of Noam Chomsky and Jacques Derrida.
  
  
• Wittgenstein praised & criticized:
  
  
  • Wittgenstein is considered one of the giants of 20th Philosophy, drawing a clear line around what can validly be discussed within the field (Logic) and what should not be discussed at all (Metaphysics). What Philosophy should concern itself is the Logical analasys of the symbols of language and the logical structure of words and their meaning. As such, he is considered a "destroyer" of Metaphysics, a label he himself didn't like.
    
    Alternately, since his defensive line around Logic was so tight that it banned the discussion of topics normally associated with Philosophy, like Ethics, Art, and Religion, some consider his ideas as more of a technical analysis of Linguistics, and not "real" Philosophy.
  
  
• Notable Facts about Ludwig Wittgenstein:
  
  
  • Religious affiliation:
    Wittgenstein was Jewish, but was raised in a Protestant household in Austria. He flirted with Catholicism for many years as an adult, even considering becoming a monk at one point, but never doing so. During World War I he read and re-read Tolstoy's "The Gospel in Brief" (1883), which inspired his thoughts on issues that fell outside of the realms of Logic and Philosophy. But he never really committed himself to any particular religious doctrine. Religion, for Wittgenstein, was more a form of expression rather than something to be committed to intellectually or in practice.
    
    
  • Wittgenstein was from one of the wealthiest families in Austria at the time, with his father having made his fortune as an industrialist in Iron and Steel. When Ludwig's father died he inherited a large fortune, which he promptly gave away, mostly to Austrian artists and the rest to his siblings (he had 7 siblings, 5 of which survived into adulthood).
    
    
  • Although Ludwig was born and raised in Austria, he is considered to be an English Philosopher, since he did most of his work in England, primarilly at Cambridge. He became a British citizen in 1940.
    
    
  • Ludwig never married and vowed to never have children, which he never did. He was briefly engaged to a Swiss woman but this ended in 1931, likely as a result of her not liking his views on children.
    
    
  • Ludwig never formally studied Philosophy, moving from studying aeronautics to studying Logic under Bertrand Russell. He found Philosophy more interesting than propellers.
    
    
  • Ludwig loved watching American Westerns. But he considered all music created after the late 19th century to be decadent and wouldn't listen to any of it. So apparently John Wayne was OK, but John Cage wasn't.
    
    
  • Wittgenstein published only two books in his lifetime, the "Tractatus" and a dictionary on spelling and pronounciation, the latter written during his middle-period as a school teacher. He claimed that he had, in the "Tractatus", solved all of the problems of Philosophy. He argued that all of these problems stemmed from a lack of understanding of the logic of language, and his book analyzed what this logic is. He also said in the book that it "shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved.î
    
    
  • He wrote most of his ideas in a hut he had built on the edge of a fjord in Skjolden, Norway, in which he spent a lot of time writing in solitude. (Every great Philosopher needs a hut). He also wrote in journals while fighing in World War I in the Austro-Hungarian army. In the war he won a decent collection of medals for bravery, fighting on the Russian front, and spending time as a POW in Italy towards the end of the war.
    
    
  • After he wrote his book, since he had solved all of the problems of Philosophy, he quit and became an Elementary School teacher in rural Austria, and also built a house for his sister. He also worked as a gardender at a monastary, and briefly considered becoming a monk, but changed his mind.
    
    
  • During his flight from Philosophy, the Logical Positivists, called "The Vienna Circle", fell in love with his book, due to it's anti-Metaphysical bias, and they coaxed him out of retirement, although he thought that the Positivists had misunderstood his ideas. Such as, the Positivists considered all religious questions as pointless, since they didn't rest soley on Reason, whereas Wittgenstein viewed religions questions as a sort of faith based on silence, transcending Logic, but were still of high importance. Ludwig thought that the Positivists had applied his ideas incorrectly. He argued that what was *not* in his writings was the most important.
    
    
  • He eventually decided that his book was wrong, and gradually abandoned the whole goal of constructing any theory of any kind, and instead viewed Philosophy as an ongoing activity of clearing up foggy language, rather than being a specifically goal-oriented task looking for any specific answer or theory. He rejected all "theorizing" in Philosophy, and decided that the purpose of Philosophy was not to create a theory that explained a problem, but to create a clarity of perception. He argued that the nature of language did not, as assumed, guarantee that because a word had a specific meaning that there was necessarily a corresponding object behind that meaning.
    
    
  • His second book, "Philosophical Investigations", which was only published after his death, inspired so-called "Ordinary Language Philosophy".
    
    
  • The "Early Wittgenstein" was convinced that Logic and Mathematics were a solid foundation for all questions of Philosophy, allowing for the discovery of objectively true facts.
    
    The "Later Wittgenstein" changed his mind, deciding that Logic and Mathematics were not tied to objectively true facts, but were simply symbols which expressed a common convention of meaning. Such as, 1+1 equals 2 only in a conventional sense, not because the concept of "2" is objectively, externally "there", as Plato would have argued.
    
    
  • Wittgenstein encouraged his students to not pursue an academic career, arguing that Philosophical insights are better expressed out in society, not in the rarified halls of Academia.
    
    
  • In 1935 Ludwig tried to emmigrate to the Soviet Union, attracted to the Communists' glorification of workers. But he was only offered teaching positions, not manual labor which he preferred, so he moved back to Norway instead.
    
    
  • Wittgenstein died of prostate cancer in England, in Cambridge, which is where he's buried.
    
    
• Quotes:
  
  
  • "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
    
    
  • "Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language."
    
    
  • "The meaning of a word is its use in the language."
    
    
  • "The tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language."
    
    
  • ìWhat we find in philosophy is trivial; it does not teach us new facts, only science does that. But the proper synopsis of these trivialities is enormously difficult, and has immense importance. Philosophy is in fact the synopsis of trivialities.î
    
    
  • ìIf only you do not try to utter what is unutterable, then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be ó unutterably ó contained in what has been uttered.î
    
    
  • "Everything arises naturally from the fact that I have no faith".
    
    
  • Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of ìphilosophical propositions,î but to make propositions clear.
    
    
  • ìI need certainty ñ not wisdom, dreams, speculation ñ and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what my heart needs, my soul, not my speculative intellect. Because it is my soul, with its passions, almost with its flesh and its blood, which must be redeemed, not my abstract spirit.î
    
    
  • ìThe Bible is nothing more than a book in front of meÖ This document cannot, in itself, ëbind meí to any faith in the doctrines it containsñas little as any other document could that might fall into my hands. If I have to believe in these doctrines, it is not because this and not that is told to me. Rather, they must be clear and obvious to me: and by this I do not mean only teachings of ethics but historical teachings.î
    
    
  • ìIn metropolitan civilization, the spirit can only withdraw into a corner. And yet, it is not at all worn out or superfluous, but, like an (eternal) witness, floats above the rubble of cultureñalmost like an avenger of God. As though it awaited a new incarnation.î
    
    
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