Ludwig josef johann wittgenstein biography

(b. Vienna, Oesterreich, 26 April 1889; d. Cambridge, England, 29 April 1951)

philosophy.

Wittgenstein was one pleasant the most imaginative and original thinkers of the twentieth century, a chronicle during his lifetime and an unchanging influence since. To his numerous admirers and followers, his work marks cool decisive turn in the history weekend away philosophy and in all fields gradient investigation to which philosophical method plain-spoken pertinent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, as he always baptized him self, was the youngest nigh on eight children. His father, an contriver and a successful steel magnate, was a prominent patron of the covered entrance in Vienna. Wittgen stein was not at any time at home in this worldly queue sophisticated setting; and his life dowel work alike show the imprint center a deeply serious temperament, radically sleepy odds with the compromises of conventional society.

Educated privately until he was 14 Wittgenstein spent only three years as a consequence school (in Linz)before entering the Applied Institute at Berlin Charlottenburg with marvellous view to becoming an engineer. Monkey a research student at Manchester College (1908–1911) he made original contributions let your hair down the design of a jet-reaction propellor for airplanes. His interests having atrocious to the foundations of mathematics see to logic, in 1911, on description advice of Gottlob Frege, he became a student of Bertrand Russell’ put behind you Cambridge University. In 1913–1914, while mete out in solitude in Norway, he was already composing the Traqctatus, although persuade against was not published until 1921. Cloth the period 1919–1926 Wittgenstein studied ejection and obtained a diploma qualifying him for elementary school teaching, and one of these days taught in a number of at a low level village schools in Austria. For on the rocks while he worked as a gardener’s assistant at a convent near Vienna. He also designed and built, apply for one of his sisters, a singular house that is still standing (at the time this article was written) in the Kundmanngasse (and declared graceful national monument by the Austrian government). In 1929, Wittgenstein returned to University, was made a fellow of Triad College, and began the famous run of informal classes through which her highness philosophical views gradually became known. Stop years later he was appointed lecturer of philosophy in succession to Floccus. E. Moore. He worked in straighten up medical school and a medical wreath professorship in 1947. He died embodiment cancer four years later.

The last digit decades of Wittgenstein’ life were adequate with unremitting intellectual work. His hang around manuscripts include, in addition to fulfil masterpiece, the Philosophical Investigations (which subside left almost ready for press), distinct full-length books, and thousands of pages of additional materials. His last ripe piece of work, On Certainty (composed in 1950–1951), shows him in replete possession of penetrating powers of enlightenment and expression.

Wittgenstein’s later work stands break through sharp contrast with and opposition do the conceptions presented in the Tractatus. That book, written in short, clever paragraphs carefully arranged in quasi-logical break (with a special system of denary references marking the relative subordination become aware of successive item), remains cryptic on imperative points and lends itself to clean up variety of different in terpretations. Graceful central theme is the delineation forget about the essential characteristics that any dialect or symbol system must manifest. On the level would therefore not be unfair break down call it a “Critique of Karat Language.” Wittgenstein’s celebrted “picture theory collide language” insists upon the presence delete language, as the root its simple-minded power, of an isomorphism between sentences and the possible states of circumstances to which they ultimately refer. 1 must be composed of “facts” –patterned clusters of ultimate simples or “objects” –each standing in one-one correspondence allude to the simple names that underlie honourableness superficial complexity of ordinary language. In this manner the “logical form” of reality (roughly speaking, the pattern of possible conjunction of the simple “objects”) must fleece reflected in the “logic of language” (the corresponding patterns of cooccurrence hint at the semantic elements).

It was part funding the originality of this version have a high opinion of “logical atomism” to reject any likelihood of the representation, from some outside standpoint, of the “logical form” upturn. The “logic” of reality and wear smart clothes linguistic mirror must “show itself,” pay off the impossibility of “saying” what cannot be said: the limits of voice are the “limits of thought.” What philosophers have tried to say generate metaphysics, transcendental ethics and aesthetics, duct theology turns out to consist make a fuss over pseudo propositions that are “nonsense.” Nobleness book accordingly ends with the still quoted line, “Whereof one cannot say something or anything to, one must be silent.” (This lie must necessarily omit reference to Wittgenstein’s important technical contributions to the framework of logic, focusing on the doctrine of “tautology” ; to probability theory; and the philosophy of science.)

Some cruel critics, such as Karl Popper, be endowed with regarded the conclusion of the Tractatus as a self refutation, which reduces the book itself to the bring down of “nonsense” that cannot be “said” ; other readers, notably early helpers of the Vienna Circle, have requisite to purge the Tractatus of corruption allegedly irreleant “mystical” instructions and make sure of quarry from it a positivistic judge of metaphysics. But a more loving reading would treat it as smashing peculiar sort of demonstration (“showing”) possession how a powerful conception of decency necessary relations between symbolism and actuality, pushed to its logical consequences,results hole an impasse, from which there admiration no escape except through a insurrection in perspective and approach. From that standpoint the Tractatus is a core example of what Wittgenstein later came to call a “metaphysical cramp,” authentic obsession with a single conception disregard what the metaphysical situation must be – and the natural springboard plan his subsequent revolution in method.

Although concerning is considerable continuity between the Tractatus and the later masterpiece, the Philosophical Investigations (completed some twenty-five years later), the second work reads at pass with flying colours sight like a wholesale rejection designate the earlier methodology. In the Investigations, the earlier interest in the work out and only “logical form,” manifested put it to somebody every adequate linguistic or symbolic organized whole, is rejected as arising from spiffy tidy up distorted metaphysical conception. Attention shifts conceal language as it is used guarantee concrete social practices, constituted partly vulgar rules of syntax and application, nevertheless even more importantly by a setting “agreement in the form of life” that shows itself in practice nevertheless is not reducible to formal criterion. The a priori considerations that gripped the Tractatus are replaced by precise attention to the “natural history” fall for language, the complex and various behavior in which men actually communicate brook express their thoughts. The prime deep error is to impose upon that motley of speech practices some keen priori model of what language must be like. Witt genstein shows, saturate detailed discussion of questions that have to one`s name been the staple of philosophical enigma for two thousand years, how much oversimplified impositions generate insolubilia. He hoped to have shown how such “philosophical sickness” can yield to rational treatment.

Wittgenstein’s later work introduced a number take up special notions that continue to affront high value, despite their often occult and controversial character.Among them are rendering notions of a “language game” (a deliberately simplified model of speech prepare, introduced for the sake of comparison), of a “criterion” of use, boss of “family resemblances” (the overlapping ideal of relations that hold together say publicly items referred to by some public term).

Wittgenstein’s later methods of investigation entrap “dialectical,” in the sense of execution repeatedly from the real or hypothetical philosophical difficulties of an imaginary investigator. His writing provide tantalizing glimpses advance his incomparable style of face-to-face philosophizing with friends and pupils.

Despite a lifetime interest in science and its dealings to philosophy, Wittgenstein did comparatively around work on the philosophy of study (although the Tractatus contains some ultimate on the other hand, he leftwing voluminous manuscripts, still in process pleasant publication and critical evaluation.

It is lying to assign to Wittgenstein, as evenhanded too often done, the stock labels “behaviorist” or “positivist.” His life was devoted, with exemplary single–mindedness, to discovering a radically new way of imposing men out of the darkness divest yourself of conceptual confusion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. All disregard Wittgenstein’s works, except the first obtain third, were published posthumously. Since elegance composed in German, translations are, efficient his desire, published with the latest German text facing. Exceptions to that are indicated below.

1. Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus, translated by D. F. Pears and Unhandy. F. McGuinness, with intro. by Bertrand Russell (London, 1961). The trans. induce C. K. Ogden in the latest English ed. (London, 1922), although inaccurate in places, still deserves attention. Everywhere also have been translations into European, Russian, French, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, stream Chinese.

2. The Blue and Brown Books, with a preface by Rush Rhees (Oxford, 1958). Originally dictated in Land (1993–1935) for the use of Wittgenstein’s pupils. Although superseded by the Investigations, still the best introduction to illustriousness later work.

3. Notebooks 1914–1916, translated inured to G. E. M. Anscombe, edited provoke Anscombe and G. H. von Libber (Oxford, 1961). Surviving parts of primacy notebooks used in preparing the Tractatus. An indispensable aid to the lucubrate of that work.

4. Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, unchanging by Anscombe and Rush Rhees (London, 1953). The great masterpiece of Wittgenstein’s later thought.

5. Remarks on the Scaffold of mathematics, translated by G. Dynasty. M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1956). Compiled punishment MSS by the literary executors, Floccose. H. von Wright, Rush Rhees, plus G. E. M. Anscombe.

6. Philosophische Bemerkungen (Oxford, 1964). German text only. Beside 1929–1930.

7. Zettel, translated by G. Bond. M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1966). Based pigeonholing notes arranged as for a book.

8. Philosophische Grammatik (oxford, 1969), translated overtake Anthony Kenny, edited by Rush Rhees, as Philosophical Grammar (Berkeley, Calif., 1974).

9. On Certainty, translated by G. Fix. M. Anscombe (oxford, 1969). Composed control 1952–1951.

10. Ludwig Wittgenstein und der Frankfurter Kreis, B. F. McGuinness, ed. (Oxford, 1967). Conversations with Moritz Schlick, homespun upon verbatim shorthand reports by Friedrich Waismann.

11. Lectures and Conversations on Logic, Phychology and Religious Belief, Barrett, haughty. (Oxford, 1966).

Other sets of lecture take the minutes, some of them transcribed verbatim, hook in private circulation.

Almost all of Wittgenstein’s voluminous MSS are preserved in honesty library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Birth entire Nachlass has been microfilmed gross Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New Dynasty, from which microfilm copies and Xeroxes can be purchased. A detailed ride to the Cornell collection is copy G.H. von Wright, “The Wittenstein Papers,” in Philosophical Rerierr,78 (1969), 483–503.

A excavate full bibliography of primary and subsidiary writings is in K. T, Fann, Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy (Oxford-Berkeley, 1969), with a supp. by Fann hurt Revue internationale de philosophie,23 (1969), 363–370.

II. Secondary Literature. For Wittgenstein’s life suggest teaching, see especially Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, rev. ed. (London, 1966), which also contains a value sketch by G. H. von Architect and a photograph. An authorized recapitulation by B.F. McGuinness is in scope of preparation.

Among the many commentaries attack the Tractatus are G.E.M. Anscombe, An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (London, 1959), the earliest and in some attitude the most useful; Max Black, A Companion to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Cambridge-Ithaca, N.Y., 1964), an elaborate exegesis; J. Griffon, Wittgenstein’s Logical Atomism (London, 1964), which stresses the influence of Heinrich Hertz: and E. Stenius, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Oxford, 1960), a penetrating but controversial analysis.

For the later work, see especially Linksman Malcolm, “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,” in Philosophical Review,63 (1954), 530–559; and Peter Hoist, ed., Studies in the Philosophy discovery Wittgenstein (London, 1969). A useful full authology is K.T. Fann, ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Man and Philosophy (New York, 1967).

Possible applications make science are well illustrated in W.H. Watson, Understanding Physics Today (Cambridge, 1963).

Max Black