Ah, but it catches the eye of someone who might not want to read about Wittgenstein. Although, I can’t understand why anyone would not want to read about Wittgenstein; I have a great admiation for his, and Spinoza’s, work. I know, two very different philosophers with two very different ontological view-points, but Wittgenstein was more interested in epistemology anyway.
Somebody, I forget who, has claimed that their meeting was the catalyst for Adolph’s anti-semitism, I gather it is even mentioned in MK.
As a disciple of Wittgenstein, do you know if he ever mentioned his schooldays with Hitler?
It is a quite extraordinary coincidence that two of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century should have been at school together is it not?
I’m not sure they are so different, until you get to the frontier of metaphysics, where they of course part company rather radically. Until then I should have thought Spinoza would readily agree with Wittgenstein’s ideas about language.
Not half as strange as a TV crime series, a ‘thriller’ or almost all daytime TV. That stuff is so strange I fail to make it past the first few minutes before thinking this is completely bonkers.
I’m not sure what to make of this. It’s a short summary of the life of LW, all of which is quite well known – I knew everything narrated here and I am just a “general reader”. Still, nice to be reminded of the great man for a few minutes in the morning, I suppose.
Alan Groff
10 months ago
Reading CG Jung’s “Psychological Types,” I was struck by how shamelessly he stole his idea from the structure of philosophy. What was remarkable was how well it worked. Anyone who examined the subject would absolutely observe the same declared Jung! Human types split into thinking, feeling, sense and intuition.
Jung’s conclusion, “rationality is a vice where sensation and intuition should be trusted,” is echoed in the author’s conclusion on Wittgenstein, “to be a great artist or thinker, you have to live,” the central idea of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf and the arc of Dostoevsky’s oeuvre.
Wittgenstein’s Aspect Perception is the distinction between the world as you subjectively perceive and the world as objectively construed and the role you play in the constitution of the former. Thinking narrows perception creating blindness.
The insight is fundamental to our struggle. The Power Elite’s worship of the Goddess of reason belongs in a Dostoevsky novel. Like the Grand Inquisitor, their blindness is their undoing. Trumpism is perception without thought.
Harmonious societies built on reason fail tragically. So, as Wittgenstein said of philosophy’s need for the rough ground, our civilization requires that same integration of perception and reasoning; neither may have the upper hand. Fragmentation and disharmony are essential for liberty and progress.
What civilisation is built on reason? Certainly not one with a multitude of genders.
AC Harper
10 months ago
I am old enough to say (with some surprise) that I was born just before Wittgenstein died. I’m pretty certain that neither of us was aware of this minute fact.
It would be interesting to make a list of all the intellectuals that spent time in the poorer jobs and communities. I wonder if there is some impulse to try on sackcloth and ashes to validate the rarified nature of intellectual thought?
And spent some their final months on the very edge of the British Isles. Jura and Connemara in this case.
D Wright
10 months ago
Wittgenstein’s interest in Catholicism, especially on his death bed, seems rather conspicuous by its absence. Especially given the passing reference to the ‘mania of Protestantism’.
Emre 0
10 months ago
Great article, but also I very much enjoyed reading the comments.
Kevin Jones
10 months ago
Either we have to be grateful to Vienna for an awful lot or Vienna has an awful lot to answer for.
János Klein
10 months ago
A fascinating essay of Wittgenstein gossip from Terry Eagleton which leaves me curious to know more about the man who was apparently a major 20th century philosopher – God knows why.
The older I get, the less interested I become in what philosophers thought and said and the more interested I become in how they lived. Absolutely barking, the lot of em.
He missed my favourite Wittgenstein story, concerning the occasion shortly after WW1 when Ludwig returned to England to meet up with all his old Bloomsbury friends. At a garden party he was introduced to Lydia Lopokova, Keynes’ new bride, who tried to make conversation with the gambit:
“I think those trees over there are lovely”.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN???” was Ludwig’s response.
Poor Lopokova burst into tears.
A somewhat ungenerous response, but in any event if you really do want to know more about LW’s life and philosophy I recommend the biography by Ray Monk, which is excellent.
peter barker
10 months ago
As alluded to in the article’s 5th para -the family that Ludwig was born into was a real basket case. I started to research this family after hearing the song Wittgenstein’s Arm (by Neil Halstead) which references Ludwig’s brother Paul who was a concert pianist, lost his arm in army service then devoted himself to redesigning piano pieces so they could be played just by his remaining left arm.
Another brother, Rudolf (Rudi), committed suicide (by poison) in public in a bar; evidently after asking the pianist to play “Verlassen, verlassen, verlassen bin ich”. Yet another brother, Kurt, shot himself towards the end of WW1 after his troops mutinied/refused to obey his orders.
The eldest brother Hans, a musical prodigy, ran off to the USA and disappeared from a boat in Chesapeake Bay; either a suicide or a disappearance as he was never heard of again.
Tony Sandy
10 months ago
I think Tractus is a joke book in the same way that Zen Koans are. I think he thought all of this is like David Byrne’s statement ‘stop making sense.’ A lot of philosophy is either pretentious waffle or to be more charitable with some cases, a struggle to make sense of reality
The way I look at it Tractus was subjective and absolutism as is maths because it is perfectionism. As my wife says paper will accept anything, from absolute drivel, lies to straight fiction. Investigations was more objective as it was about the real world (mixed up and chaotic, through several different sources existing and trying to get attention).
With regards to his attitude towards time, I would say it is down to how you define it. To me it is a measurement of change, solely and simply. Without transition, it wouldn’t exist. Every time you move or speak, reality changes / moves on as thought or action. E-motion can slow down perception or speed up this awareness (negative as in depression or boredom / positive as in elation or excitement). We can artificially speed up growth or decay as well, through our actions – demolishing a house that was falling down anyway or replacing it with a new building as nature feeds on decay and death , plus reproduces to fill gaps in its ranks. That’s how I think of it anyway.
Stephen Brady
10 months ago
When he demolished the Cartesian Dualism (through the Private Language argument) he did everyone a favour….
Jerry Carroll
10 months ago
Very nice article. There was no understanding Wittgenstein’s work, not even by the other great minds of his time including Betrand Russell. I read somewhere that the second book he wrote contradicted the first at every point. It also was unreadable. What interest remains in the man are in his bizarre eccentricities. In this he is rather like another great genius, John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner in mathematician and economics who suffered from schizophrenia. Also a homosexual, he was the subject of “A Beautiful Mind” (2001) starring Russell Crowe..
Adrian Maxwell
10 months ago
Thank you Terry for your interesting and informative article. I see Wittgenstein was impossibly exacting and fascinated with language and its usage. So, I am emboldened to gently point out that you have misspelled the word ‘scarpering’. Many people do this, it has become my life’s work to correct the spelling. In June 1919 the German fleet scuttled itself (I think thats the right way to put it) in the bleak waters known as Scapa Flow to the north of Scotland (at the time Wittgenstein was in a POW camp in Trentino, having been captured fighting for the Austrian army). Cockneys in the East End of London adopted the words Scapa Flow into rhyming slang – to Scapa Flow meant to go or to run away, it was shortened to ‘Scapa’ – ‘here comes a copper, we better scapa.’. The correcting spelling, I assume Liudwig would agree, is ‘Scapaing’. All is quiet in the green valley of silliness.
matthew feig
10 months ago
Excellent article but overlooks a significant detail , Wittgenstein was an atheist Jew from a society that anhilliated its Jews, who had a profound but complex relationship with God (sort of joining a Catholic monastery at one point ) that he explicitly references in his work. He struggled with the spirit as well as with the mind.
He might have had a hard time proving his Christian roots during the Nazi years, but that doesn’t mean he either was or considered himself to be an atheist Jew.
Ian Gribbin
10 months ago
Next one on the man who Wittgenstein considered a greater genius than he: Piero Sraffa.
His cousin was Friedrich Hayek. Hayek makes far more sense, but isn’t as kooky or as full of exasperating conundrums. Reagan liked Hayek. Not Salma Hayek, mind you, although I am sure that even she was not as exasperating as poor mad Ludwig.
I joined a philosophy forum to go through it. They didn’t get it either.
Christian Cantos
10 months ago
Talking about Wittgenstein with style. This is an outstabding and philosophically inspired paper written on the subject
Andrew Langridge
10 months ago
Wittgenstein’s ‘private language argument’ has been very influential, but I’m convinced is wrong and a misunderstanding of artistic practice in particular. What was Cezanne doing when painting Mont St.Victoire over and over again in an attempt to ‘get it right’? He considered this inner work to be immensely valuable despite the outer scene remaining unchanged.
Last edited 10 months ago by Andrew Langridge
Nicky Hamlyn
10 months ago
It’s easy to mock, but philosophers, like artists, have to be prepared to make fools of themselves, and for a sustained and scathing dismissal of philosophy, Paul Valery is recommended.
john zac
10 months ago
Thank you so much for sharing. Ludwig may have tried to hard.
Steve Murray
10 months ago
What i also find fascinating is the way in which so many of his contemporaries seemed to be in thrall to him. Why should this be so? I’d expect him to be rather contemptuous of it, but i’m not so sure? I won’t think about it for long though, since i’ve a meal to prepare.
Bill W
10 months ago
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Last edited 10 months ago by Bill W
David Simpson
10 months ago
As always, thank you for that
Allison Barrows
10 months ago
Erm, I’m pretty sure there needs to be more than one individual to qualify as a cult.
Just what has the attached photo got to do with anything?
Ah, but it catches the eye of someone who might not want to read about Wittgenstein. Although, I can’t understand why anyone would not want to read about Wittgenstein; I have a great admiation for his, and Spinoza’s, work. I know, two very different philosophers with two very different ontological view-points, but Wittgenstein was more interested in epistemology anyway.
Weren’t Hitler & Wittgenstein at school together in Linz?
Apparently they were. I doubt they were they bestest buddies, though.
Somebody, I forget who, has claimed that their meeting was the catalyst for Adolph’s anti-semitism, I gather it is even mentioned in MK.
As a disciple of Wittgenstein, do you know if he ever mentioned his schooldays with Hitler?
It is a quite extraordinary coincidence that two of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century should have been at school together is it not?
I think that he did not, but I can’t say for sure.
I’ve read all his written work, Hitler never came up in them.
Thanks. Extraordinary, perhaps they never met after all.
Popper might think: two peas in a pod.
Did my O Level language exchange with an Austrian boy. Went to his school for the day: the Linz Gymnasium. Very very odd place even in the 70s.
I’m not sure they are so different, until you get to the frontier of metaphysics, where they of course part company rather radically. Until then I should have thought Spinoza would readily agree with Wittgenstein’s ideas about language.
it’s a still from the film ‘Wittgenstein’ mentioned in the article
Thanks. I looks like a strange film.
It’s the poster picture for Derek Jarman’s 1993 film “Wittgenstein”.
Derek Jarman: that would account for its strangeness.
Not half as strange as a TV crime series, a ‘thriller’ or almost all daytime TV. That stuff is so strange I fail to make it past the first few minutes before thinking this is completely bonkers.
I’m pretty sure it’s a still from Derek Jarman’s film about Wittgenstein.
It looks like a still from the Jarman movie.
I’m not sure what to make of this. It’s a short summary of the life of LW, all of which is quite well known – I knew everything narrated here and I am just a “general reader”. Still, nice to be reminded of the great man for a few minutes in the morning, I suppose.
Reading CG Jung’s “Psychological Types,” I was struck by how shamelessly he stole his idea from the structure of philosophy. What was remarkable was how well it worked. Anyone who examined the subject would absolutely observe the same declared Jung! Human types split into thinking, feeling, sense and intuition.
Jung’s conclusion, “rationality is a vice where sensation and intuition should be trusted,” is echoed in the author’s conclusion on Wittgenstein, “to be a great artist or thinker, you have to live,” the central idea of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf and the arc of Dostoevsky’s oeuvre.
Wittgenstein’s Aspect Perception is the distinction between the world as you subjectively perceive and the world as objectively construed and the role you play in the constitution of the former. Thinking narrows perception creating blindness.
The insight is fundamental to our struggle. The Power Elite’s worship of the Goddess of reason belongs in a Dostoevsky novel. Like the Grand Inquisitor, their blindness is their undoing. Trumpism is perception without thought.
Harmonious societies built on reason fail tragically. So, as Wittgenstein said of philosophy’s need for the rough ground, our civilization requires that same integration of perception and reasoning; neither may have the upper hand. Fragmentation and disharmony are essential for liberty and progress.
Is there no subject that can be addressed without a reference to Trump?
Perhaps there is a Godwin’s Law for that?
What civilisation is built on reason? Certainly not one with a multitude of genders.
I am old enough to say (with some surprise) that I was born just before Wittgenstein died. I’m pretty certain that neither of us was aware of this minute fact.
It would be interesting to make a list of all the intellectuals that spent time in the poorer jobs and communities. I wonder if there is some impulse to try on sackcloth and ashes to validate the rarified nature of intellectual thought?
Orwell of course.
And spent some their final months on the very edge of the British Isles. Jura and Connemara in this case.
Wittgenstein’s interest in Catholicism, especially on his death bed, seems rather conspicuous by its absence. Especially given the passing reference to the ‘mania of Protestantism’.
Great article, but also I very much enjoyed reading the comments.
Either we have to be grateful to Vienna for an awful lot or Vienna has an awful lot to answer for.
A fascinating essay of Wittgenstein gossip from Terry Eagleton which leaves me curious to know more about the man who was apparently a major 20th century philosopher – God knows why.
The older I get, the less interested I become in what philosophers thought and said and the more interested I become in how they lived. Absolutely barking, the lot of em.
He missed my favourite Wittgenstein story, concerning the occasion shortly after WW1 when Ludwig returned to England to meet up with all his old Bloomsbury friends. At a garden party he was introduced to Lydia Lopokova, Keynes’ new bride, who tried to make conversation with the gambit:
“I think those trees over there are lovely”.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN???” was Ludwig’s response.
Poor Lopokova burst into tears.
Oh, it’s not so funny really.
A somewhat ungenerous response, but in any event if you really do want to know more about LW’s life and philosophy I recommend the biography by Ray Monk, which is excellent.
As alluded to in the article’s 5th para -the family that Ludwig was born into was a real basket case. I started to research this family after hearing the song Wittgenstein’s Arm (by Neil Halstead) which references Ludwig’s brother Paul who was a concert pianist, lost his arm in army service then devoted himself to redesigning piano pieces so they could be played just by his remaining left arm.
Another brother, Rudolf (Rudi), committed suicide (by poison) in public in a bar; evidently after asking the pianist to play “Verlassen, verlassen, verlassen bin ich”. Yet another brother, Kurt, shot himself towards the end of WW1 after his troops mutinied/refused to obey his orders.
The eldest brother Hans, a musical prodigy, ran off to the USA and disappeared from a boat in Chesapeake Bay; either a suicide or a disappearance as he was never heard of again.
I think Tractus is a joke book in the same way that Zen Koans are. I think he thought all of this is like David Byrne’s statement ‘stop making sense.’ A lot of philosophy is either pretentious waffle or to be more charitable with some cases, a struggle to make sense of reality
The way I look at it Tractus was subjective and absolutism as is maths because it is perfectionism. As my wife says paper will accept anything, from absolute drivel, lies to straight fiction. Investigations was more objective as it was about the real world (mixed up and chaotic, through several different sources existing and trying to get attention).
With regards to his attitude towards time, I would say it is down to how you define it. To me it is a measurement of change, solely and simply. Without transition, it wouldn’t exist. Every time you move or speak, reality changes / moves on as thought or action. E-motion can slow down perception or speed up this awareness (negative as in depression or boredom / positive as in elation or excitement). We can artificially speed up growth or decay as well, through our actions – demolishing a house that was falling down anyway or replacing it with a new building as nature feeds on decay and death , plus reproduces to fill gaps in its ranks. That’s how I think of it anyway.
When he demolished the Cartesian Dualism (through the Private Language argument) he did everyone a favour….
Very nice article. There was no understanding Wittgenstein’s work, not even by the other great minds of his time including Betrand Russell. I read somewhere that the second book he wrote contradicted the first at every point. It also was unreadable. What interest remains in the man are in his bizarre eccentricities. In this he is rather like another great genius, John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner in mathematician and economics who suffered from schizophrenia. Also a homosexual, he was the subject of “A Beautiful Mind” (2001) starring Russell Crowe..
Thank you Terry for your interesting and informative article. I see Wittgenstein was impossibly exacting and fascinated with language and its usage. So, I am emboldened to gently point out that you have misspelled the word ‘scarpering’. Many people do this, it has become my life’s work to correct the spelling. In June 1919 the German fleet scuttled itself (I think thats the right way to put it) in the bleak waters known as Scapa Flow to the north of Scotland (at the time Wittgenstein was in a POW camp in Trentino, having been captured fighting for the Austrian army). Cockneys in the East End of London adopted the words Scapa Flow into rhyming slang – to Scapa Flow meant to go or to run away, it was shortened to ‘Scapa’ – ‘here comes a copper, we better scapa.’. The correcting spelling, I assume Liudwig would agree, is ‘Scapaing’. All is quiet in the green valley of silliness.
Excellent article but overlooks a significant detail , Wittgenstein was an atheist Jew from a society that anhilliated its Jews, who had a profound but complex relationship with God (sort of joining a Catholic monastery at one point ) that he explicitly references in his work. He struggled with the spirit as well as with the mind.
He might have had a hard time proving his Christian roots during the Nazi years, but that doesn’t mean he either was or considered himself to be an atheist Jew.
Next one on the man who Wittgenstein considered a greater genius than he: Piero Sraffa.
How Piero first enlightened Ludwig:
His cousin was Friedrich Hayek. Hayek makes far more sense, but isn’t as kooky or as full of exasperating conundrums. Reagan liked Hayek. Not Salma Hayek, mind you, although I am sure that even she was not as exasperating as poor mad Ludwig.
Hayek’s economic theories are quite kooky! Maynard Keynes (with whom, coincidentally, W. spent much time at Cambridge) makes far more sense.
I think the Tractatus is an abstract work of art. I could be wrong; I don’t understand it in the slightest.
I joined a philosophy forum to go through it. They didn’t get it either.
Talking about Wittgenstein with style. This is an outstabding and philosophically inspired paper written on the subject
Wittgenstein’s ‘private language argument’ has been very influential, but I’m convinced is wrong and a misunderstanding of artistic practice in particular. What was Cezanne doing when painting Mont St.Victoire over and over again in an attempt to ‘get it right’? He considered this inner work to be immensely valuable despite the outer scene remaining unchanged.
It’s easy to mock, but philosophers, like artists, have to be prepared to make fools of themselves, and for a sustained and scathing dismissal of philosophy, Paul Valery is recommended.
Thank you so much for sharing. Ludwig may have tried to hard.
What i also find fascinating is the way in which so many of his contemporaries seemed to be in thrall to him. Why should this be so? I’d expect him to be rather contemptuous of it, but i’m not so sure? I won’t think about it for long though, since i’ve a meal to prepare.
<>
As always, thank you for that
Erm, I’m pretty sure there needs to be more than one individual to qualify as a cult.