Aeacus

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Vienna, April 26th 1889 - Cambridge, April 29th 1951) is a Austrian Philosophe then British, which contributed decisive shares in Logique, in the theory of the Fondements of mathematics and in Philosophie of the language. It published of alive sound only one major work: the Tractatus logico-philosophicus appeared in 1921, whereas he studied with Cambridge. In this work influenced at the same time by the reading of Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, and by Frege, Moore and Russell, Wittgenstein showed the limits of the language and faculty to know of the man. He then thought of having brought a solution to all the philosophical problems to which he was possible to answer, he left England and was diverted philosophy until in 1929. On this date, it returned to Cambridge and criticized the principles of its first treaty. It developed a new philosophical method then and proposed a new manner of apprehending the language, developed in its second philosopher's stone, philosophical Investigations , published, like number of its work, on a purely posthumous basis.

Its work had, and preserves, a major influence on the analytical Philosophie. Initially, the Tractatus influenced its former professor Bertrand Russell but especially the philosophers of the Cercle of Vienna, even if Wittgenstein considered that those made serious misconception on the significance of its thought. Both times of its thought deeply marked number of its pupils and other philosophers. Among the “wittgensteiniens”, one counts Gilbert Ryle, Friedrich Waismann, Norman Malcolm, G.E.M. Anscombe, Rush Rhees, and Peter Geach; and, more recently, its influence is sensitive at James Conant, Ian Hacking, Stanley Cavell, Saul Kripke, Jacques Bouveresse, Sandra Laugier or Bernard Aspe.

Biography

Ludwig Joseph Johann Wittgenstein was born with Vienna. His/her grandparents paternal, of Jewish origin and come from Saxony (Germany), had settled in Austria-Hungary, after being themselves converted with the Protestantisme. It is there that the father of Ludwig, Karl Wittgenstein, made fortune in iron and steel industry. His/her mother, Leopoldine Kalmus, was of confession Catholique. Ludwig was baptized in a Catholic church and he wanted for his death a catholic burial, although he was neither believing nor practitioner during his second time.

Ludwig was youngest of eight children in a house which constituted a stimulative environment. His/her two parents were musicians and all their children were gifted artistically and intellectually. The father was a guard of arts and the house received many personalities of high culture, particularly of the musicians. The family often saw Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. Paul Wittgenstein, the brother of Ludwig, carried out a brilliant career of pianist, even after the loss of its right-hand man during the First World War, drama after of which Ravel composed the Concerto for the left hand . Ludwig itself did not have an exceptional talent for the music, but the devotion that it carried all its life to him is an essential component of its personality and its thought. It will use many musical examples in its writings. Another family common point was a strong tendency to self-criticism, until the depression and with the suicide; three of his/her brothers committed suicide.

Until 1903 Ludwig was provided education for in residence following what it began 3 years with the Realschule with Linz, a school directed towards the technical disciplines. It was provided education for there at the same time as Adolf Hitler and one can see them both on a photograph of class. Kimberly Cornish, in its work the Jew of Linz tries to show that not only the young people Wittgenstein and Hitler knew each other but that they were also hated. She also claims that Wittgenstein was the Jew to which Hitler refers in Mein Kampf in the passage concerning its schooling to Linz and which many elements of the writings Antisémite S of Hitler are projections of the Wittgenstein young person on all the Jewish people. The majority of the biographers of Wittgenstein consider nevertheless that the evidence used by Cornish is particularly thin and rests on circumstantial associations and speculations of which it is already very difficult to ensure that they knew each other and even less were hated or that Wittgenstein had the least role in the course of the history of the anti-semitism.

In 1906 Ludwig started studies of engineer in mechanics with Berlin and in 1908 it left to the Université Manchester to obtain its doctorate. It is to this end that it fitted in a laboratory of engineering where it made research on the behavior of the kites in upper atmosphere. It was interested then in aeronautical research and in particular in a propeller driven by reaction at the end of the blades which it designed and tested.

Wittgenstein studied mathematics for its research, it was interested in particular in the bases of mathematics, particularly after having read the principles of mathematics of Bertrand Russell, his work preceding Principia Mathematica.

He briefly studied in Germany near Gottlob Frege, that some regard as the largest logician since Aristote and who during the previous decade had posed the foundations of the modern logic and logical mathematics. Frege highly advised to him to read work of Bertrand Russell which had discovered some fundamental inconsistencies in its work.

In 1912, Wittgenstein went to study with the Université of Cambridge with Bertrand Russell, and belonged like him to the Cambridge Apostles. It made him, like with G.E. Moore, a great impression. It started to work on the bases of the Logique and the Logique mathematics. During this period, it had three great centers of interests: philosophy, music and voyages. In 1913, Wittgenstein inherits a fabulous fortune, following the death of his/her father. It anonymously made gift of part of this one, at the beginning at the very least, artists and authors Austrian such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl. In 1914 it missed meeting Trakl, this one being committed suicide a few days before the arrival of Wittgenstein.

Although stimulated by its studies with Cambridge and its conversations with Russell, Wittgenstein arrived at the conclusion which it could not manage to make the turn of the fundamental questions which interested it in a university environment. In 1913 it was withdrawn in a hut placed in a moved back mountain of Norway, with Skjolden, which was accessible only to horse. This voluntary exile enabled him to be devoted entirely to its research and he will say this episode later that he was one of the periods most impassioned and productive of its existence. He wrote a text founder of logic entitled Logik and from which will be drawn celebrates it Tractatus logico-philosophicus .

First World War

Since he lived as a hermit, Wittgenstein was surprised by the advent of the First World War. It engaged in the Austro-Hungarian army, hoping that côtoyer death would enable him to improve. It was useful initially on a ship, then in a factory of Artillerie. In 1916 it was sent on the Russian face in a regiment of Artillerie where it gained several medals for its courage. The pages of its newspaper of then reflect nevertheless its contempt for the mediocrity of his/her comrades soldiers.

Throughout the war, Wittgenstein held a newspaper in which it laid down philosophical and religious reflections with personal remarks. At the time of its engagement, Wittgenstein had devoured the comments of the Gospel S of Leon Tolstoï and became a convinced Christian well that disturbed and full with doubts. Its work on Logik started to take an ethical and religious direction. It is by associating its new interest for ethics with the personal logic and reflections which it developed during the war that its work carried out in Cambridge and in Norway took the form of the Tractatus . Towards the end of the war in 1918, Wittgenstein was made prisoner in north of the Italy by the Italian army. The Italian army put the hand, in the businesses of Wittgenstein, on a manuscript written in German, named Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung . Thanks to the intervention of his/her friends of Cambridge, Wittgenstein managed to have access to books and could prepare its manuscript of the Tractatus . It sent it in England, with Russell, which regarded it as a philosophical work of great importance. After the release of Wittgenstein in 1919, they worked together to make it publish.

The English translation was initially assured by Frank Ramsey, then by C.K. Ogden, with the assistance of Wittgenstein. After some discussions on the translation of the title, G.E. Moore suggested entitling it Tractatus logico-philosophicus , an allusion to the Tractatus theologico-politicus of Spinoza. Russell wrote a foreword, so that the book profits from the reputation of the one of largest the philosophers of the moment.

The difficulties perdurèrent nevertheless, Wittgenstein was defied of Russell, not appreciating its foreword which according to him évinçait the fundamental problems of the Tractatus . He knew frustration in front of the difficulties of finding an editor interested and more still while realizing than some likely to publish its book were interested by the foreword of Russell than by the contents of the work. It was finally published by the newspaper of Wilhelm Ostwald Annalen of Naturphilosophie which printed a German version in 1921 and by Routledge Kegan Paul which printed a bilingual version with the foreword of Russell and the translation of Ramsey and Ogden in 1922.

“Lost years”: life after the Tractatus

At the exit of the war, Wittgenstein was a radically changed man. He had become a Christian convinced and impassioned, he had faced a wild war and had succeeded in crystallizing the boiling of his intellectual and emotional life in the drafting of the Tractatus . It was about a work transfiguring all that he had been able to do before concerning logic within a radically new framework which, thought he, offered a final solution to all the philosophical problems.

These upheavals in the life of Wittgenstein, at the same time at the end of its first period and at the beginning of its second, led it to living a life of asceticism. Its most spectacular gesture was to leave its share of heritage to artists of before guard Austrians and German of which Rainer Maria Rilke, like with his/her brothers and sisters while insisting that they promise never to return to him. It had the feeling that to give money to the poor could only corrupt them whereas it would not make evil with the rich person.

Considering at the time the Tractatus signed the end of philosophy, Wittgenstein turned over in Austria and became teacher. Wittgenstein was educated according to the methods of the Austrian movement of school reform which rest on the stimulation of the natural curiosity of the children and the development of their autonomy of judgment rather than simply to make them memorize facts. These principles of education filled with enthusiasm it but it had to face many difficulties of practical application in its class of the villages of Trattenbach, Puchberg-amndts-Schneeberg and Otterthal.

During these years of teaching, Wittgenstein wrote a dictionary of pronunciation and orthography to make work its pupils, it will be published and accommodated well by the profession. It will be the only book which it will publish apart from the Tractatus .

The methods of teaching of Wittgenstein were intense and rigorous, its pupils profited from an education of a not very common level for the context. Wittgenstein however had very little patience with its slowest pupils. Its severity, its discipline of iron included/understood corporal punishments and the mistrust of the villagers who suspected it of being insane caused a certain number of conflicts with certain parents of pupils. Particularly depressed throughout this period, he resigned in April 1926 and turned over to Vienna with a feeling of failure.

He worked then as garden assistant with a monastery close to Vienna. He planned to be made monk and went until getting information about the way of joining the order. During a maintenance, one indicated to him that it would not find what it sought in the monastic life.

Two events contributed to leave Wittgenstein its depression: the first was the invitation of his/her sister Margaret ( Gretl ) Stoneborough to be worked with the architect Paul Engelmann (who had become a friend close to Wittgenstein during the war) on the design and the construction of its new house. They built a house in a modernistic style, in the style of Adolf Loos which they admired both much. Wittgenstein found work intellectually captivating and exténuant. It gave itself body and heart in the absolute perfection of details like the handles of doors and the radiators which were to be positioned with a perfect exactitude to ensure the symmetry of the parts. This work of modernistic architecture evoked some comments inspired, G.H. von Wright declared that the house had same the static beauty as the Tractatus . This entire investment in this professional work had a reinvigorating effect and Wittgenstein found motivation and will.

The second event occurred towards the end of its work on the house, when he was contacted by Moritz Schlick, one of the leaders of the new whole Cercle of Vienna. Viennois positivism was influenced considerably by the Tractatus and although Schlick did not manage to trail Wittgenstein there, they had a certain number of philosophical discussions with the participation of other members of the circle, in particular Friedrich Waismann. Wittgenstein often felt frustrated by these meetings, it had the feeling that Schlick and its colleagues made fundamental misinterpretations in connection with the Tractatus and it ends up refusing any discussion on the subject. The majority of the dissensions related to the importance of the religious and mystical life, Wittgenstein considering these questions as a kind of faith inexpressible while the positivists found them useless. At the time of the one of their meeting, Wittgenstein refused to discuss the Tractatus and sat down while turning the back on its interlocutors then déclama of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore. At all events, the contacts with the Cercle of Newcastle Upon the Tyne stimulated the intellect of Wittgenstein and awoke its interest for philosophy. It also met Franck Ramsey, a young philosopher of mathematics who came several times from Cambridge to meet Wittgenstein and the Cercle of Vienna. During its discussions with Ramsey and the Circle of Vienna, Wittgenstein started to wonder about its work and considered the possibility that the Tractatus comprises a serious error, which marked the beginning of its second career of philosopher and will occupy it for the remainder of its life.

Return to Cambridge

In 1929 Wittgenstein decided, on the councils of Frank Ramsey and others of his/her friends, to go back to Cambridge. It was accommodated at the station by a crowd made up of some of the largest intellectuals of England and realized with horror that it was one of the most famous philosophers in the world.

In spite of its notoriety, it could not work immediately in Cambridge for lack of diploma and was registered initially like simple student. Russell quickly recognized its first stay like sufficient and pressed it to use the Tractatus like Thèse of doctorate, which it did in the year. Russell and Moore acted as jury for defense; at the end, Wittgenstein typed to them familiarly on the shoulder and declared: “You do not worry, I know that you will never include/understand it. ” Moore wrote in his report/ratio of jury: “In my opinion, it is about the work of a genius; it is in any case sufficient to satisfy the standard of a doctorate of Cambridge. ” Wittgenstein was engaged as assistant and became member of the Trinity College .

Political sympathies of Wittgenstein were rather on the left and when one questioned it on the Marxist theory he declared communist heart and idealized the life of the workers. Attracted by the description of the Russia, Shorts View off Russia of Keynes, it plans in 1934 to emigrate in Soviet Union with his/her best friend (and can be lover) Francis Skinner. They took Russian lessons and in 1935, Wittgenstein left on a journey to Leningrad and Moscow to see whether it could find work there. A post of teacher was proposed to him, but he preferred a manual work and returned three weeks later.

Of 1936 with 1937, Wittgenstein lived again in Norway, leaving Skinner behind him. He worked on the philosophical Investigations . During winter 1936/37, he wrote a series of “confessions” to close friends, for the majority concerning of small incartades without gravity, in order to clean his conscience.

In 1939 G.E. Moore resigned and Wittgenstein, then considered as a genius of philosophy, obtained the pulpit of philosophy of Cambridge and acquired British nationality in the tread.

After its courses or periods of intense philosophical reflections, Wittgenstein liked to go to see Western S or to read whodunnit S, he regarded them as showers of the spirit. This taste for the popular accounts contrasted with its musical preferences, field for which he regarded any posterior music with Brahms as a symptom of the decline of the company.

At this time of its life, its point of view on the bases of mathematics had evolved/moved considerably. Earlier he would have considered than the Logique offered a solid base, he had even planned to update the work of Russell and Whitehead, the Principia Mathematica . He denied from now on that it can have done any there mathematical to discover or that the mathematical statements are true in a real direction. Mathematics expressed simply the conventional direction of certain symbols. He also denied that the Contradiction can be fatal with a mathematical system. He gave conference series to which Alan Turing assisted and which were the theater of vigorous debates on the subject.

During the Second world war it left Cambridge and went voluntary to be used in a hospital as London, like as an assistant in the laboratory of the infirmary Royale Victoria. He taught in Cambridge until in 1947, then he resigned to concentrate on the writing. He did not like the intellectual life of Cambridge and he encouraged in fact several of his students to continue nonacademic careers. Wittgenstein remained nevertheless in liaison with the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright which succeeded to him the post of professor at the University of Cambridge.

Although Wittgenstein was implied in a relation with Marguerite Respinger, a Swiss young woman family friend, their projects of marriage failed in 1931 and it Maria finally never. The majority of its sentimental stories concerned young men. There exists a considerable debate on the intensity of the homosexual life of Wittgenstein, inspired by W.W. Bartley which affirms to have found evidence of several momentary connections when it lived Vienna. At all events, there remains clear that Wittgenstein had several durable homosexual relations including/understanding an intense passion with his/her friend David Pinsent and of the stable relations with Francis Skinner and Ben Richardson. The majority of late work of Wittgenstein were written in insulation of the countryside and in particular on the west coast of the Ireland. He had written the essence of what will be published after its death under the title Philosophische Untersuchungen , the philosophical Investigations , when one diagnosed to him a cancer of the prostate in 1949. This work remains the most significant part of its work. It spent the two last years of its life between Vienna, Oxford and Cambridge. The work of this time was inspired by the conversations which it held with his friend and former student Norman Malcolm during long holidays spent in the house of Malcom with the the United States. They spoke about the work of Malcolm which studied the response of G.E. Moore to the Scepticisme on the question of the objects of the significant experiment ( objects off judicious-experiment ). This work was published after its death in Of the certainty. Wittgenstein died in Cambridge in 1951, a few days before his/her friends do not come to pay a last homage to him. Its last words were: “Say to them that I had a marvellous life. ”

Philosophy

One often distinguishes Wittgenstein from the Tractatus of that, posterior, of the return to philosophy about 1929.

The Tractatus logico-philosophicus

  • the philosophical controversies are due to a mécompréhension of the logical structure of the language. Philosophy is clarification of the language.

  • the logical laws are tautologies, they do not say anything on the world (as the law has = A).

  • the language is isomorphous in the world: the structure of a true proposal is similar to that owing to the fact that it describes.

  • the significance of a statement, it is its syntactic use.

The return to philosophy

  • the forms of life indicate the types of activity human structured by different rules (a little like board games).

  • With each form of life corresponds a Jeu of language, i.e. a way of using the language from the certain point of view and according to certain rules which determine the direction of the words.

  • the philosophical problems come from confusions and interferences between Jeux of different language.

Works

Tractatus

See detailed article: Tractatus logico-philosophicus

Intermediate works

Wittgenstein wrote much after its return to Cambridge and ordered most of its writings in incomplete manuscripts. With its death, there existed approximately 30.000 manuscript pages. Many was published in several volumes.

For this period, in the Years 1920 and 1930, its work included/understood attacks varied against the perfectionist philosophy of the Tractatus . It published an article on this subject, Remarks one Logical Form .

Philosophical investigations

See detailed article: philosophical Investigations

It is today by this work published on a purely posthumous basis into 1953 that Wittgenstein has the most influence. It is made up of two parts: the first contains 693 paragraphs ready for the impression in 1946, but their publication was cancelled; the second which was added by the editors.

Principal works

Bibliography on…

See too

Random links:French establishments of India | Spiro Agnew | Atmosphere (unit) | Equip with male Portugal of handball | Usseaux | Unleashed in the East