Wittgenstein the Man
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 9:50 AM
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1 Comments |
I recently read Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein--and it is wonderful. Monk has done his research, and I especially enjoyed the many diary entries and such--it really brings Wittgenstein to life as a character. He was a fascinating man, and I say this as someone who has virtually no interest in him as a philosopher.
One particularly interesting feature of Wittgenstein's life is the sheer number of important intellectuals he interacted with in his time: Russell, Moore, Broad, Malcolm, Frege, Ramsey, Anscombe (and the list goes on).
And as it turns out, little Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler spent a year together in elementary school. One book even argues that Wittgenstein was the occasion for Hitler's early anti-Semitism. I'm not sure if that's true or not--but this class picture of the two boys certainly raises some interesting questions.
1 Comments:
Matthew at 9:34 PM said... Monk's biography is quite good. I know you said that you're not interested in Wittgenstein as a philosopher. There are after all plenty of things to be critical about, ie he doesn't offer a lot of straight forward arguments. However, if you have either the time or the inclination, there are interesting problems to mined in W's work.
