Talk:Ludwig Wittgenstein

Morons on the loose again in Wikipedia

Anonymous editor, fix your language please
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Yeah I know, so what else is new? This time someone -- I don't have the time or desire to find out who -- dug deep into the version history of the Wittgenstein article. They found a 1901 group photograph of little Adolf in a classroom together with other pupils. An extreme-fringe author, Kimberley Cornish, author of the extreme-fringe (and much derided) book The Jew of Linz, uploaded a cropped version of the photograph to the English Wikipedia and labeled two pupils in the picture "Adolf Hitler" and "Ludwig Wittgenstein". The fact that Wittgenstein started to attend the Realschule in Linz only in 1903 did not bother Cornish, and now the editor re-introducing this garbage into the Wittgenstein article is equally untroubled by mere chronology. The moron editor thought to be on the safe side by captioning the picture with a "no consensus" disclaimer. I suppose next we will have to include a painting of men and dinosaurs walking side by side into the Dinosaurs article, with a cautionary note that there is "no consensus" on their contemporaneity. I would ask what motivates a person to do this, but I fear that peering inside their skull would only expose a crock of shite... which stinketh much.--82.113.121.55 (talk) 10:29, 6 September 2010 (UTC) Hello, "SlimVirgin".--82.113.106.30 (talk) 09:20, 7 September 2010 (UTC) It is a terrible thing for Wikipedia that someone like "SlimVirgin" is a Wikipedia Administrator and according to a box on her user page, "#87 among active Wikipedians" (though she may well be among the top ten most powerful WP editors). By now, she is edit-warring with full abandon, not even bothering to supply edit summaries, in her crazed quest to insert extreme-fringe hypotheses. That this goes counter to WP policies (WP:WEIGHT, WP:BRD) does not trouble her. As one of the "special ones" on WP, she can count on any number of administrators and editors to back her up, sight unseen.--82.113.106.30 (talk) 09:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC) Please stop removing that material, or changing the writing. You may strongly dislike it, but it's properly sourced and something that's discussed a lot. I'm trying to get the article back up to FA standard, and adding writing such as "they would have had nothing to do with each other due to being two grades apart" isn't going to get us there. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 10:13, 7 September 2010 (UTC) As you show every indication of wanting to continue with your edit-warring, I have reported you on Wikipedia's relevant noticeboard. Do you think you are intellectually suited for the task of editing and encyclopedia? For example, Hitler's Vienna was indeed, as you put it in your article edit, published a year after the FOCUS article quoting Hamann. But the original German book -- Hitlers Wien -- came out in 1997. Did that not even occur to you?--82.113.106.30 (talk) 10:54, 7 September 2010 (UTC) You're editing warring on an article that is currently being rewritten, so it can't be perfect overnight. You're adding poor writing, breaking references, adding formatting that isn't MoS-complaint, and removing material that is very solidly sourced. Whether you like it (or I like it) is irrelevant. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 10:58, 7 September 2010 (UTC) Thanks but I already fixed the reference formatting that I had broken inadvertently. Nobody is talking about "LIKE" except you. I can find lots of stuff that is sourced and claim it belongs in an encyclopedia. That doesn't make it worthy of inclusion. Address my example of "walking with dinosaurs" (for which I could find plenty of sources in the Young Earth Creationist literature) and explain whether or not it belongs in the Dinosaurs article and why. There is no requirement for editors to hold off correcting misinformation or removing questionable material at any time. I notice you requested semi-page protection to get rid of me, so if your wish is granted you will soon return to what you were doing before.--82.113.106.30 (talk) 11:11, 7 September 2010 (UTC) I'll return to it regardless of whether the page is protected, because it's directly relevant to a bio. It has been widely discussed, and there's further material to be added about tests that the police in Australia conducted. There's no point in ignoring it, because it will be conspicuous by its absence, so what we do is find the sources who've addressed it and tell our readers what those sources say. That's all we ever do. The section is not finished yet, and edit-warring while it's being written is not smart. It's easy to turn up and call people morons when you're otherwise making no contribution. Please look at the way this article read until the rewrite began a few days ago. There has been significant improvement, which will continue. All you're doing is slowing things down. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 11:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC) SV you are a nutcase. "tests that the police in Australia conducted" just proves it as (if proof were still needed). The only person who claimed that he had the photograph examined by a police forensic examiner in Australia is the extreme-fringe Kimberly Cornish. No police examiner in Australia has ever stepped forward to confirm the claim. Even if one had, we already know it is impossible for Hitler and Wittgenstein to appear in the 1901 photograph together. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the article, which is supposed to be about Wittgenstein's work and his life. If you must, then create a new article called Unsubstantiated claims about Hitler and Wittgenstein. Then you can put in all sorts of fringe stuff to your heart's content. With your recent gazillion changes, it is hard to tell what all has changed. It looks superficially better because you have tightened up formatting and done some copy-editing. However, I do not feel that it informs me any better about W's writings. The exposition of W's work is still inadequate and much more needs to be done. If you feel qualified to do that, then do so. Ramming in extreme-fringe stuff is not helpful. Mention of Cornish's extreme-fringe hypotheses can still be found on the Web, essentially for two reasons: (1) The book's publisher gave it a big publicity push at the time and even managed to get the Sunday Times to run excerpts before the book's publication. (2) Various mirror websites of Wikipedia, and websites scraping from them, are still stuck on older versions of Ludwig Wittgenstein and The Jew of Linz when User:Kimberly Cornish was busily editing Wikipedia as IPs and under his name to promote his book. Again, explain why your treatment should not be applied to Dinosaurs, too. And read WP:WEIGHT. Before you got busy on Ludwig Wittgenstein, the article included the barest mention of Cornish's book (with a Wikilink). That was more than enough for a book overwhelmingly derided and ridiculed. P.S. I need to turn my attention to Real Life for a while. Registered editors, please do not let SlimVirgin get away with inserting extreme-fringe content into Ludwig Wittgenstein, even if it is accompanied by a disclaimer.--82.113.106.30 (talk) 12:01, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Case brought before Fringe Theories Noticeboard.--82.113.106.29 (talk) 18:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

What case? your comment at the ftn, is that you think the material is fringe and has undue weight put on it. as a part of the article, it doesn't really seem that way to me, as two or three paragraphs in a quite long biographical article are not excessive. Though the relevance of the material is a bit of a question. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 23:56, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

not clear on this revert

SlimVirgin: I trimmed down the section on early schooling here, removing a lot of trivia and speculation, and you reinstated it here. the edit summary doesn't explain the revert: was this a mistake, or is there a substantive reason for keeping this material in the article? --Ludwigs2 17:35, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

You removed a lot of material from reliable sources without saying why, Ludwig. I'm trying to get the article back up to FA status, because it lost its star a few years ago, so it has to be comprehensive. What I'm currently doing is adding the biographical material the sources discuss most, then when I have a first draft, I'm going to go back through it to trim and tighten. What did you not like about the sources you removed? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 17:46, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I did say why, but only in an abbreviated form in the edit summaries. it boils down to the following points:

• The picture I removed seems to have issues about its authenticity: it claims to depict someone who might be Wittgenstein, but also seems to have been taken two years before Wittgenstein entered the school. Its only solid connection to Wittgenstein, in fact, is that it was used by someone advocating the theory that Wittgenstein and Hitler were acquainted, which (see next) has its own problems
• Much of the material I removed was debate about speculations that Wittgenstein and Hitler were acquainted. This has (as far as I can tell) only two possible uses on Wikipedia:
  1. To merely make the claim that H and W knew each other. This deserves mention in the article as a notable claim and interesting possibility (the same way that W's acquaintance with Klimt, Brahms, and Mahler is mentioned), but is basically trivia and should be limited per WP:NOTDIR. In the same vein, I'm considering deleting some of the material about Brahms as excessive detail.
  2. To make the claim that Wittgenstein and Hitler were somehow influences on each other's lives. This as far as I can tell is a highly speculative assertion made by one or two authors - it is insignificant in the scholarly world, and only really draws prurient attention because it involves Hitler. I doubt this claim passes wp:UNDUE.

Whether it's social trivia or scholarly fringe, it has too heavy of a footprint in the article, IMO. do you see what I mean? --Ludwigs2 18:07, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

You won't be able to tell how heavy the footprint until the first draft's ready, because lots of material is going to be moved, removed, expanded, shifted around, and tightened. I'm less than a quarter way through that process. As for its being trivia, it's definitely not that. You said earlier it was speculation, but there is always speculation involved in the construction of a history. For example, psychiatrists speculate about whether he was autistic; philosophers and historians speculate as whether his brother Rudi killed himself because he feared he had been identified as gay. You didn't remove either of those issues.

What we do is make sure the sources doing the speculating are good ones. In your edit you removed the views of several very good sources, including:

• Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Penguin, 2001. (professor of philosophy, and a key Wittgenstein biographer)
• Hamann, Brigitte and Thornton, Thomas. Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship. Oxford University Press, 2000 (historians)
• Goldstein, Lawrence. Clear and Queer Thinking: Wittgenstein's Development and his Relevance to Modern Thought]. Duckworth, 1999 (professor of English literature)

The fact is that this issue is discussed by reliable sources, with people coming down on various sides, so we just repeat that discussion. And Hitler is far from trivial in W's life. There is more to come about what happened when W applied for Mischling status, which our article currently doesn't cover well.

I worry that you're editing in accordance with the recent anon, who was mixing up some basic issues (Hitler and W going to school together, and whether they knew or affected each other), with a conspiracy theory written up by an Australian writer some years ago, who went a great deal further. I forget his arguments, but they involved Wittgenstein working for the Russians, and Hitler adopting Wittgenstein's theory of mind. None of that is in the article, and is a separate issue entirely. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 04:59, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Long on my watchlist (though not a participant here), I noticed the intense activity recently and that this article is already very much improved again already (and I recognize the process is frequently not without some discomfort of course). On balance, IMO, it's moved back in the general direction of FA quality. I also happen to be among those who question the relevance of extensive inclusion of the Hitler material at Realische. This approach, as of today, is sensible in my estimation. It's generally a good way of breaking up the multiple aspects of this early and important educational and personal experience about which many scholars and commentators have discussed. It allows the relevance and content of the Hitler material to be discussed more-or-less separately, and I support breaking up the Realische section into brief subsections. ... Kenosis (talk) 14:08, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, K. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 18:12, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

SV: I made my edit because of precisely the reasons that I gave above; there is no sense suggesting otherwise. I'm more than happy to wait until you're done editing. I had no idea you were involved in a major revision (there's no {{underconstruction}} tag or equiv.). let's see what it looks like when you're finished, and revisit the issue in if needed. --Ludwigs2 18:21, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate that. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 05:11, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

There is absolutely no requirement to hold off on reverting damage introduced by SV until she declares that her handiwork is done. If she wants to edit undisturbed, then she can set up a sandbox in her userspace. I have inserted a "disputed section" tag, please do not remove it while discussion is ongoing. Especially egregious is the prominent citation of Laurence Goldstein, a borderline figure at best when it comes to Wittgenstein biography, in the very first paragraph. Worse, the current version does not name Brigitte Hamann, who is a million times more credible and reliable, and who has said numerous times that W. and H. would have had nothing to do with each other, until the very end of the section.--82.113.106.31 (talk) 10:20, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Would you mind logging in to make your edits? It is clear that you're Goodmorningworld (talk · contribs) from the German Wikipedia, because you've been editing about this single issue for a long time, as well as for some reason removing that Wittgenstein was Jewish. You're also editing as 82.113.106.16 (talk · contribs), 82.113.106.28 (talk · contribs), 82.113.106.29 (talk · contribs), 82.113.106.30 (talk · contribs), 82.113.106.31 (talk · contribs), 82.113.121.51 (talk · contribs), 82.113.121.52 (talk · contribs), 82.113.121.53 (talk · contribs), 82.113.121.54 (talk · contribs), and 82.113.121.55 (talk · contribs). Splitting your contributions makes it harder for admins to see that you've been posting about this issue frequently, and that you've been very rude to people about it.

The material is widely discussed, and in our article is well-sourced, and placed in context. There's no reason to remove it, and I can't imagine why anyone would even want to. Laurence Goldstein is a professor of English who has written a book about Wittgenstein; his opinion is not one we're going to single out for censorship. He believes Hitler would have taken against Wittgenstein for the reasons he explains. Against that view, Ray Monk, a philosopher who has also written a book about Wittgenstein, writes that there's no evidence they had anything to do with each other. We express both views. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 10:36, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Well looky there. SV finally decides to talk and no longer upholds her outrageous and false insinuation that I hurled a sexist insult at her. As far as being rude about her fitness to co-write an encyclopedia, I very much stand by my rudeness. The evidence is there for all to make up their own mind. Her "FOX NEWS" style is the death of any encyclopedia. Did dinosaurs walk the earth together with humans? There have been sources that claim they did, others disagree. Did Neanderthals hunt down and eat homo sapiens sapiens? Some say yes, others no. Did Hitler have Jewish genes? Some say yes, others no. "We report, you decide. But to help you make up your mind, we will mention the outlandish minority view first."

I have nothing to add beyond the arguments already made in my edit summaries, here on the Talk page, and on the Fringe Theories Noticeboard. Registered editors will have to fight it out with SV from here on out. Good luck to you all. --82.113.121.52 (talk) 03:15, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

IP: You know, you really make my life difficult. I'm personally willing to give your opinion credit - I think it may have some merit, though it needs to be discussed - but I really don't want to be seen as supportive of someone who spouts out the kind of vituperative drivel you spouted out in your last post. If you would contain yourself within polite, civil discourse, then we could all have a decent discussion that might actually make the article better. As it stands, I hope it's true that you have nothing further to say, because frankly you're just not helping your own cause.

emotional lemmings, I swear... --Ludwigs2 04:12, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

What I find odd is that anyone would want to exclude this material.

Think about it: you're born into the wealthiest family in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and an extraordinarily talented one too, and therein lies your downfall, because your dad wants the boys to be captains of industry, not pianists or thinkers, and forces you into an intense home education that just doesn't work. While Europe's finest are popping in for tea to tell you how wonderful you are, your own mum and dad have very little to say in your favour and won't even let you go to school. Added to which you're having to deny to yourself who you really are: that you're gay, and maybe even Jewish, and that you're never going to be that iron and steel salesman dad has set his hopes by.

The situation takes its toll and two of your brothers kill themselves, so dad tries to save you by sending you to school. Unfortunately, your education has been so spotty you fail the exam for the posh school, and instead get sent to a working-class backwater where you stick out like a sore thumb with your high voice, your high culture, and your high collars. And just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, who does the school bully turn out to be? Adolf Hilter! SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 13:10, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to exclude the material, but I do think it needs to be kept in check. Frankly (despite the fact that it's presented as scholarship) this is mostly tabloid material. Objectively, we have two 14/15 year olds who attended the same school (briefly, though in different grades), and later became famous in very different areas of life. However, there is no objective evidence that they knew each other, no objective evidence that they had any influence on each other, no objective evidence that they even remembered that they went to school together in later years. There is merely a speculative argument with salient dramaturgical elements (the troubled, tragic figure of Wittgenstein in composition with the intractably diabolical agent Hitler - variations on Othello and Catcher in the Rye). My sense is that this theory is a more significant as a titillating bit of gossip about famous people (with the extra added spice that any mention of Hitler gives such things) than as mainstream scholarship. To the extent that it tries to place Wittgenstein as a factor in Hitler's antisemitism it smacks of historical revisionism; to the extent that it doesn't it smacks of trivia.

In other words, I think the idea is noteworthy, but I also think it falls under Fringe guidelines. Have any of its proponents demonstrated anything more than that W&H attended the same school? has the idea of some Hitler/Wittgenstein cross-influence been picked up as valid by general scholarship? is the idea floated mostly by seedy public interest in anything Hitleresque? My sense is 'no', 'no' and 'yes', in which case it ought to be cut back in the article to a bare minimum. --Ludwigs2 16:41, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Bear in mind that we're not a scholarly project, and this isn't a scholarly article—and it's not clear what's meant by mainstream scholarship when it comes to Wittgenstein's life, because no historian has written a full-length treatment that I'm aware of, so the bios that we have (which are excellent) are written by academics in other faculties.

That they were at the same school is not in dispute and is discussed by the sources who write about Wittgenstein's schooldays. The separate issue of whether Hitler had a view on W is only mentioned in our article in two paragraphs:

There is much debate about the extent to which Wittgenstein and his siblings saw themselves as Jews, and the issue has arisen in particular regarding Wittgenstein's schooldays, because Adolf Hitler was at the same school for part of the same time. Laurence Goldstein argues it is "overwhelmingly probable" the boys met each other: that Hitler, vicious and aggressive, would have hated and envied Wittgenstein, a "stammering, precocious, precious, aristocratic upstart ..." Other commentators have dismissed as irresponsible and uninformed any suggestion that Wittgenstein's wealth and unusual personality may have fed Hitler's antisemitism, in part because there is no indication that Hitler would have seen Wittgenstein as Jewish. ...

Wittgenstein and Hitler were born just six days apart, though Hitler had been held back a year, while Wittgenstein was moved forward by one, so they ended up two grades apart at the Realschule. Monk estimates they were both at the school during the 1904–1905 school year, but says there is no evidence they had anything to do with each other. Hitler referred in Mein Kampf to a Jewish boy at the school, but there were 17 Jews there at the time: "At the Realschule I knew one Jewish boy. We were all on our guard in our relations with him, but only because his reticence and certain actions of his warned us to be discreet. Beyond that my companions and myself formed no particular opinion in regard to him." Several commentators have argued that a school photograph of Hitler (see above right; Hitler is on the top right) may show Wittgenstein in the lower left corner, but Hamann says the photograph stems from 1900 or 1901, before Wittgenstein's time.

I can't see why that would be regarded as too much in such a long article. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 16:54, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

My concern would be with the latter half of the second paragraph, starting with "Hitler referred in Mein Kampf to...", and with the associated picture. The problem with this section (in terms of using it on wikipedia) is that it adds no substantive, verifiable information about Wittgenstein. it's only purpose is to support the thesis that H&W knew each other, but that theory has already been presented adequately in the paragraph above; adding in a supportive argument verges on advocacy. Likewise, it is unclear whether the picture actually has LW in it - even those who don't argue that it's from the wrong date will not say definitively that that is LW. That places the picture a couple of steps above an image of bigfoot. This section does a good job of giving the impression that H&W had some sort of relationship, but all in the "could it be that...?" implicative mode that is never a substitute for actual scholarship. Do you see what I'm getting at?

Also, that 'Monk estimates...' line seems redundant with the same information given in the above paragraph. minor issue, but just so it's said. --Ludwigs2 19:12, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The point of mentioning the picture is that it's mentioned a lot as a photograph of Wittgenstein, so I added what other reliable sources have added—namely that it seems to have been taken before Wittgenstein started at the school. I'm a little perplexed that my contradicting of a tiny-minority-view is being called a tiny-minority view.

I didn't follow your last point, Ludwigs. I thought you said you were going to wait until I had a first draft ready? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 19:23, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually I'm objecting to the over-indulgence of the tiny-minority viewpoint in the first place. We have to be careful that critiquing it doesn't give it undue prominence through the back door. Why introduce the picture in the first place if what that means is that we have to go out of our way to explain that the picture is largely considered specious?

and sorry, I thought you were done with this section, which is why I brought up the last point. ignore it if it's inappropriate. --Ludwigs2 19:39, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Not even close to being done. Once I've got a first draft ready I'm going to go back through the article and tighten everything so that it's not too long, so most of it will change. Or at least that was my plan. To be honest this is putting me off. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 20:07, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

SlimVirgin asked me to take a look at this issue, and, frankly, I'm baffled. The section about his Jewish identity and possible brush with Hitler is fascinating, well-written, NPOV, discussed in reliable sources, and important in understanding Wittgenstein's history and background. I cannot understand what objections there are to it. It's clearly not a "tiny-minority viewpoint" that Wittgenstein had significant Jewish ancestry and came from a famous Jewish family that repressed/denied their Jewish heritage, that he went to the same school as Hitler at the same time, and that Hitler commented in Mein Kampf on at least one Jew he went to school with there. Maybe the comment was about Wittgenstein, but there were 16 other Jews there, and Hitler may not have identified Wittgenstein as one. Maybe that photo shows the two of them together; more probably not. The article makes this clear in a neutral way. So what is the "tiny-minority viewpoint" to which people are objecting? And even more bizarrely, why is there a "factual accuracy" tag on that section? Is there a single word in there that is not factually accurate? Jayjg ^(talk) 21:01, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't put the factual accuracy tag there, and I would have removed it except I didn't know why it was there. and the 'tiny minority' viewpoint I'm concerned about is the assertion that Wittgenstein somehow contributed to Hitler's antisemitism, which seems to have almost no scholarly support. Are we clear on this?

Slim, why don't you let me know when you're done and we can pick it up then if there's a need. I wouldn't have discussed it now if you hadn't opened he conversation, and I don't know why you posted the two paragraphs you posted above if you weren't prepared to discuss the issue. I'm not in a hurry, so finish what you're doing first. --Ludwigs2 22:54, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't open it again, L. The anon/Goodmorningworld posted about it again, and I responded to him, then you posted and I responded to you. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 23:00, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, you're right. my bad. won't happen again. --Ludwigs2 23:26, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Terry Eagleton called him the philosopher of poets and composers, playwrights and novelists.

Is this so relevant to be included in first secion of article?--Vojvodae please be free to write :) 05:51, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Is relevant to put, in article about philosopher, scientist, artist, writer geographical coordinates of his grave?--Vojvodae please be free to write :) 05:57, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd say no as a rule, except in exceptional circumstances (e.g. E.A. Poe's grave, which is a tourist attraction of sorts in its own right). I mean, I don't suppose it would harm anything, but it seems about as superfluous as including their shoe size. --Ludwigs2 23:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Legacy

I'd like to start work on a legacy section, and specifically a subsection that deals with his manuscripts. But I find I can't understand what's going on.

I know that he left his manuscripts to Rhees, Anscombe, and von Wright. And I've read this very interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly. But I'm struggling to understand the current relationship between Michael Nedo and the Cambridge Wittgenstein Archives; the Norwegian Wittgenstein Project, abandoned in 1987 (they produced the CD collection of his works published by Oxford University Press in 1988, though it seems it's no longer available); and the Wittgenstein Archives at Bergen.

Is anyone able to shed light on it? And who are the trustees, now that the three original ones are deceased? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 19:38, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

G. E. Moore context and links?

Hi, I'm new to the page (and Wittgenstein himself) so I was not aware who G. E. Moore is. However once you get to the "Work on Logik" section he's an important figure, only mentioned in passing previously as a member of the Cambridge Apostles, and then at the beginning in reference to his wife.

I can't seem to edit, so could someone at a minimum link his name to his page? Better would be to provide some context with how he came to be important to LW enough to be invited to be his "secretary"... Spopejoy (talk) 22:27, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I've linked it on first reference; the reason it wasn't linked is that the part of the sentence it was previously in was removed. You're right that we need something about who Russell and Moore were, and why they were so influential. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:36, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Influences/Influenced???

Why is there no section on Wittgenstein's influences/influenced? He is one of the most influential individuals in history, especially in recent times. --96.253.50.139 (talk) 03:36, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Because you haven't written one. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 15:57, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) The article is undergoing revisions, so that may be on its way. wait for a bit.

that being said, though, W in not as influential as one might think. In academic circles, at any rate, Wittgenstein is acknowledged but not used all that much. People who want to work with Analytic Philosophy tend to stick to Russell (I think they avoid the Tractatus because Wittgenstein overtly rejected it), and nobody much works with Wittgenstein's 'therapeutic' approach because it assumes that most philosophical ideas are dysfunctional to start (not a comfortable stance for a professional academic philosopher). Wittgenstein doesn't have the popular appeal of someone like Einstein, and he's not notorious or controversial the way Neitzche or Marx were, his approach was never really adopted by a school (I think mostly because of the dominance of the Vienna School at that time and the rise of post-modernism in philosophy), and frankly it's just very esoteric material. We are accustomed to objective theories, and it's hard to know what to do with a theory that is fully and self-consciously self-reflexive.

Plus, what Slim said. --Ludwigs2 16:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

How long does it take? It's only the influences. --96.253.50.139 (talk) 01:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Out of what? 5, 10, 20, 100?

"In his leaving certificate, he received a top mark only once, in religious studies; a 2 for conduct and English, 3 for French, geography, history, mathematics and physics, and 4 for German, chemistry, geometry and freehand drawing." jnestorius^(talk) 15:53, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what the lowest mark would have been; I'll look to see if a source mentions that. Other sources compare it to A, B, C, and D, so I assume anything below 3 (C) was a fail. I believe he did fail his written German, and it seems that was a 4. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 21:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

It may be an ordinal scale rather than an interval one (1, 2, 3, 4 equivalent to A, B, C, D), so it may not be 'out of' anything at all. --Ludwigs2 22:12, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Is his marks really relevant for one general article? We can also put number of his passport and general data. I understand this article as general introduction in Wittgenstein life and work, not reinterpretation of some good book about him (like Monks biography). --Vojvodae please be free to write :) 06:50, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Some Influences

I know that Wittgenstein was influenced by Hume, Kant, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Einstein, Frege, and Russell. Can we please put this back up with all of the other influences?--96.253.50.139 (talk) 23:36, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I put in the influences/influenced section. Those are all the people I know who influenced, or were influenced by Wittgenstein. Please add more if you know of them. --96.253.50.139 (talk) 00:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)