Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who is widely considered the most important philosopher of the 20th century. He produced two revolutionary philosophies in a single lifetime: the early 'picture theory' of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which held that language mirrors the logical structure of reality, and the later 'language-game' philosophy of the Philosophical Investigations, which argued that meaning is determined by use within forms of life. Each philosophy transformed the discipline; taken together, they define the range of analytic philosophy.
Key Ideas
Key Contributions
- ● Developed the picture theory of meaning in the Tractatus: propositions are logical pictures of facts, and the limits of language are the limits of the world
- ● Developed the language-game theory of meaning in the Investigations: meaning is use — words have meaning through their role in language-games embedded in forms of life
- ● Introduced the concept of 'family resemblance' — many concepts (like 'game') are unified not by a common essence but by overlapping similarities
- ● Developed the private language argument: a language understood by only one person is impossible, because meaning requires public criteria
- ● Articulated a therapeutic conception of philosophy: philosophy's task is not to solve problems but to dissolve them by showing how they arise from linguistic confusion
- ● Showed that rule-following is a social practice, not a private mental act — with profound implications for the philosophy of mind and social science
Core Questions
Key Claims
- ✓ Early (Tractatus): The world is the totality of facts, not of things — propositions are logical pictures of facts
- ✓ Early: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent — the limits of language are the limits of the world
- ✓ Later (Investigations): Meaning is use — the meaning of a word is its use in the language-game
- ✓ Later: There are no private languages — meaning requires public criteria of correctness
- ✓ Later: Many concepts are united by family resemblance, not by common essences
- ✓ Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language
- ✓ The philosopher's task is not to explain but to describe — and thereby to dissolve philosophical problems
Biography
Life
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889, in Vienna, into one of Europe's wealthiest and most culturally prominent families. Three of his four brothers died by suicide. He studied engineering in Berlin and Manchester before turning to the foundations of mathematics and philosophy, traveling to Cambridge in 1911 to study with Bertrand Russell.
His Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) — the only book published in his lifetime — was written partly in the trenches of World War I. Believing he had solved all the problems of philosophy, Wittgenstein abandoned the discipline and worked as a schoolteacher, gardener, and architect in Austria.
He returned to Cambridge in 1929, gradually developing an entirely new philosophy that repudiated the central assumptions of the Tractatus. The Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953) presented this later philosophy through a distinctive and innovative method of philosophical therapy.
Wittgenstein held the chair of philosophy at Cambridge from 1939 to 1947 but was temperamentally unsuited to academic life. He died of prostate cancer on April 29, 1951, in Cambridge. His last words were: 'Tell them I've had a wonderful life.'
Legacy
Wittgenstein's influence on philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, and the social sciences is immeasurable. The Tractatus shaped logical positivism and the philosophy of science; the Investigations shaped ordinary language philosophy, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of social science.
Methods
Notable Quotes
"{'text': 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.', 'source': 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 7', 'year': 1921}"
"{'text': 'The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.', 'source': 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.6', 'year': 1921}"
"{'text': 'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.', 'source': 'Philosophical Investigations, §109', 'year': 1953}"
"{'text': 'If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.', 'source': 'Philosophical Investigations, Part II, xi', 'year': 1953}"
"{'text': 'The meaning of a word is its use in the language.', 'source': 'Philosophical Investigations, §43', 'year': 1953}"
Major Works
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Treatise (1921)
- Philosophical Investigations Treatise (1953)
- Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics Treatise (1956)
- The Blue and Brown Books Lecture (1958)
- On Certainty Treatise (1969)
Influenced
- J. L. Austin · influence
- Saul Kripke · influence
- Richard Rorty · influence
- Iris Murdoch · Intellectual Influence
- Elizabeth Anscombe · Teacher/Student
- Jean-François Lyotard · Intellectual Influence
- Thomas Nagel · Intellectual Influence
Influenced by
- Arthur Schopenhauer · influence
- Søren Kierkegaard · influence
- William James · influence
- Gottlob Frege · influence
- Bertrand Russell · Teacher/Student
- G. E. Moore · influence
Sources
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness)
- Wittgenstein by A.C. Grayling (Oxford: Very Short Introductions)
- The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (ed. Hans Sluga and David Stern)
- Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk
External Links
Translations
Discussions
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