Project:About Wittgenstein: Difference between revisions

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Vienna, 26 April 1889 - Cambridge, 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who mostly worked and taught at the University of Cambridge. He is widely considered one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.

Born into a wealthy bourgeois family, he soon became acquainted with the most relevant figures of Viennese ''fin de siècle'' culture (J. Brahms, G. Klimt, G. Mahler, K. Kraus). He completed his studies in mechanical engineering in Manchester, where he developed a keen interest in the works on logic and the philosophy of mathematics by Gottlob Frege (1948-1925) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). He therefore moved to Cambridge in 1911 to attend the lessons of Russell, who immediately noticed his sharp perspicacity, as well as his troubled attitude.

Later, he spent some time (1913-1914) in Skjolden, Norway, where he wrote and dicated his first works on logic (the ''[[Notes on Logic]]'' and the ''[[Notes dictated to G.E. Moore in Norway]]''). At the outbreak of World War I, he enlisted as a volunteer in the Austrian army. The war was one of the most revealing experiences of Wittgenstein’s life. Amid the harshness of the conflict, his first and only published work – the ''[[Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]]'', completed during his imprisonment in Cassino (1918-1919) – came to light. The book was published in a first German edition, disapproved by the author, in 1921 and later in the English translation by Wittgenstein’s friend Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) in 1922.

Turning away from philosophical thought, from 1922 to 1928 Wittgenstein devoted himself to elementary school teaching in a small Austrian village, to architecture – he built his sister Margarete’s house – and to working as a gardener in a convent. The interest which the newborn, neo-positivist Vienna Circle paid to his work elicited rather cold reactions on his part.

In 1928, however, a conference at mathematician Luitzen Brouwer’s (1881-1966) house reawakened his interest in philosophy, convincing him to move back to Cambridge, where he obtained the teaching qualification. The years from 1928 to 1941 are remembered as a period in which the logical-philosophical theories of the ''Tractatus'' are thoroughly reconsidered: starting with the ''Lecture on Ethics'' (written and delivered in 1929-1930), he revised and modified his ideas on language, logic, the foundations of mathematics, psychology, anthropology, and symbolic forms. The result of these reflections was collected in a series of manuscripts and typescripts (including the ''Philosophical Remarks'', ''Philosophical Grammar'', the ''Big Typescript'', the ''[[Blue Book]]'' and the ''[[Brown Book]]'', ''[[Zettel]]'') by Wittgenstein himself, or annotated during lectures, transcribed, and edited by his students.

During World War II, he served in a civil hospital. In the period between 1947 and 1950 he spent time in England, Ireland, and the USA, where in the summer of 1949 he sketched out his ''[[Über Gewißheit|On Certainty]]''. But his best known and most memorable, albeit unfinished work from this period remains the ''[[Philosophische Untersuchungen|Philosophical Investigations]]'', the masterpiece of the “later” Wittgenstein, which, ever since its publication in 1953, has been fertile ground for contemporary philosophy.

In his last years, he deepened his acquaintance with G.H. von Wright (1916-2003), Rush Rhees (1905-1989) and G.E.M. Anscombe (1919-2001), who later became the literary executors and published most of his posthumous works. He died in 1951 at the age of 62.

His most famous words: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (''Tractatus logico-philosophicus'', 7). His last words: “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”.

It has often been emphasized – even by Wittgenstein himself, in some passages – the discontinuity between his youthful thought and his mature reflections, especially in relation to the connotation of the nature of language – formally structured in the “early” Wittgenstein, linked to the variable forms of culture in the "second" Wittgenstein. However, lines of continuity can be discerned, especially in the conception of philosophy as a "critique of language" and the "ethical point" of philosophical work, which is not intended to operate a foundation or give rise to a theory, but contains a transformative force of the human being.