Talk:Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein in Moscow in 1939

The fully referenced note that Wittgenstein went from Berlin to Moscow in 1939 was reverted by Dannylost without any discussion whatever. Should Dannylost (or anyone!) have any reasons to justify the reversion, please discuss it here. Should nothing be forthcoming, I will put it back in a week. The edit also gave the 2008 value of the gold paid to the Reichsbank by the Wittgenstein family in 1939 as over US$50,000,000. This was also changed with no justification, despite the fact that the figure is correct. Editors should perhaps be a little more zealous in putting comments on the discussion page before acting, I think.

I didn't notice the monetary details. They should be put back. (BTW, the section jumps from one topic to another much too often. It's confusing, and details such as the gold's worth should rather be moved to footnotes.)

However referenced, I don't see any point to mention his visit to Moscow. Other travels written about in the paragraph are all related to the highly relevant issue, namely the efforts he made to save his family. This is not a fancy userpage, and not every country W visited should be mentioned. The fact is you didn't have anything more interesting to say about the visit, than that someone recalled it.

Regarding zealousness, I simply try to be bold, and get my intentions clear before entering long debates. The alternative is trying hard not to offense anyone, and having nothing get done in the end. In the same manner, you shouldn't wait a full week. I think most wikipedians prefer solving an issue and moving on, over following discussions that are being dragged for days or weeks.

Hope I haven't missed anything, trespassers william (talk) 13:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

This is not a fancy userpage, and not every country W visited should be mentioned. Why not? This is an encyclopedia. It communicates information. Where do we draw the line as to what information constitutes "fancy" information? Information that is trivial or unimportant to one person may be of great interest to another person. My friend Holmes demonstrated this on many occasions. Lestrade (talk) 15:58, 17 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Tough one.

a. From the top of my mind: Information that is either built into an already represented subtopic in a relevant way, or comes in a well structured original chunk of its own. The Moscow fact may very well turn out to be relevant if info will be added about a way it influenced W's life or work, or even his family's.

b. WP should always be interesting at least to a distinct significant minority of readers. Because, you know, many come here to acquire general education. Anyone whose wish is to explore obscure details about W would rather turn to more comprehensive resources, simply because it is quite a hard work, writing them all down.

c. Turning to the policies, I found three possible backups for my position. from WP:NOT "merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia." From Wikipedia:The perfect article: "is of an appropriate length; it is long enough to provide sufficient information, depth, and analysis on its subject, without including unnecessary detail or information that would be more suitable in "sub-articles", related articles, or sister projects." and "reflects expert knowledge; it is grounded in fact and on sound scholarly and logical principles."

d. The last one brought me to some more speculation. Encyclopedic articles require a certain degree of reading comprehension. When isolated, a sentence should excite a "So What?", and yet be understood in light of the rest of the paragraph, and of course paragraphs should be written to allow this. Perhaps the only statements that are understandable, to an extent, independently of the subject matter, should be the introductory and explanatory ones, those that can guide a reader why any topic is important when it is not self-evidently so.

I can see I haven't answered very clearly (and overstressed your Why?). I hope these are helpful thumb rules anyway. trespassers william (talk) 19:16, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Those, like Dannylost, ignorant of the controversy surrounding Wittgenstein's relation to Russia should read the Wikipedia article "The Jew of Linz" on my book of the same name. Antony Flew (emeritus professor of Philosophy, University of Reading) has publicly stated that he was convinced by the book's arguments that Wittgenstein was the Trinity College don who recruited Blunt, Burgess, Philby and Maclean for the Comintern. It is therefore of enormous interest that Wittgenstein was in Moscow only weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland and immediately prior to the family payment of US$50,000,000 to the Reichsbank. These issues are documented in Moran's article and in the book "Wittgenstein's Poker", yet shied away from by Wittgenstein's hagiographic biographers. It is quite certain that had the British government known of the intention to pay Hitler US$50,000,000, that British citizenship would never have been granted to Wittgenstein. (Had the transfer been effected only weeks later, Wittgenstein would have faced hanging on a charge of aiding and abetting an enemy state in time of war.) This is not a small matter. It certainly ought to have been explicitly mentioned in any Wittgenstein biography, and is surely worth a few words in Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kimberley Cornish (talk • contribs) 23:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It is indeed interesting, then. However, if you want to claim something, claim it. Collect the relevant facts and write a paragraph about it, stating the claim clearly. Make it easier for readers to judge the claims, and for editors to improve and add upon them. Don't bother passing readers of remote sections with scattered facts, that might not add up for them when they browse away. (Of course, it can be made summarily and refer the reader to the book's article for the detailed theory.) trespassers william (talk) 00:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I could never understand why Wikipedia has so much room in its articles for information about references to popular culture, but is stingy about including genuine information. Is Wikipedia appealing to the MTV set by its willingness to fill articles about whether someone was mentioned in the film "The Matrix" or in a rap song by "50 Cent"? A few words about the fact that Wittgy was in Moscow in 1939 raises howls of protest, though. Youth must be served.Lestrade (talk) 01:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Upon reading the article that was listed as a reference for W. being in Russia in 1939, I wasn't convinced. The relevant passage: "Mrs Gornstein said, according to Drobnitsky, that Wittgenstein made a second trip to Moscow in 1939, when he still wanted to live and work in the USSR. She learned of this trip from Sophia Janovskaya, whom he visited." This is third-hand information, which I don't think is documented anywhere else. If we have any OTHER, confirming, more reliable evidence that W. was in Russia in 1939, let's see it, but at the moment I think it's far from widely acknowledged, and this article doesn't do much to rule out my doubts. Enigma00 (talk) 02:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The issue here is not whether the worthy Enigma00 is personally convinced, but whether the edit is soundly referenced to a reputable academic source. Moran's article is the source of of all academic work on Wittgenstein's 1930s involvement with the Soviet Union and his article is referenced in Monk's now standard Wittgenstein biography "Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius". (p.643. of Monk's "Select Biography" - neophyte Wittgensteinians might peruse the other names that Monk includes in this to glean some idea of Moran's importance here.) Moran is a well known academic, whose 1973 book on the Tractatus was considered worthy of six pages in the "Philosophical Review" (Vol. 84, No. 4 Oct 1975, pp. 570-575), a review in "The Philosophical Quarterly" (Vol.25, no.98. Jan. 1975, pp.84-5,) and elsewhere. He researched Wittgenstein's visits to the Soviet Union and obtained the personal testimony of members of the Soviet Academy of Science. (This is somewhat different from hearsay.) His paper spawned a minor academic industry in the 1970s. What he wrote about Wittgenstein and the result of his researches into Wittgenstein's visits is clearly important. Now in contrast to Enigma00, the "talk" page shows that other people are convinced that the issue matters and should be in Wikipedia. Accordingly - and bearing in mind the status of Moran as a reputable writer - I intend to revert back to my original after allowing a week for discussion. I suggest that should any editor disagree with this, that he/she should provide reasons for obliterating mention of Moran's researches so that we can then seek third party Wikipedia adjudication on whether such obliteration is reasonable.Kimberley Cornish (talk) 09:09, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I never called into question the author's credentials, nor his importance. All I'm saying is that if the ONLY source we have for W. being in Russia in 1939 is this third-hand information from a single paragraph in one article, that's pretty scant evidence. Your argument misses the point entirely; you deflect criticism about the strength of the evidence by referring instead to the reputation of the writer and his work. My point is, for such a grand claim (that is not attested elsewhere), we should like to have some grand evidence, better than a third-hand account. I'm not accusing anyone of being dishonest, I'm only pointing out that memory is fallible and that things get distorted when they don't come from the source. It is worth noting that other testimony from the article is surely mistaken (such as one Soviet philosopher's impression that W. was interested in dialectical materialism and was well versed in the history of Soviet philosophy; there is no textual evidence of this in the W. corpus, no second-hand accounts of this from his students and friends), as Monk points out in his book. It is also worth noting that the only reason Mr. Cornish is keen to have this information added is to serve certain academic vanities of his own, namely his widely discredited work 'The Jew of Linz'. Enigma00 (talk) 18:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Fortunately I am in a position to correct Enigma00 when he asserts that I want to have the information added "to serve certain academic vanities" of my own. I hereby inform him that this is not so. I trust that as a gentleman, he will therefore accept my correction, behave as a gentleman should and apologize. That is a matter for him. Now, on his claim that my work on Wittgenstein is "widely discredited" I simply point out that various of its arguments have been accepted by Antony Flew, Laurence Goldstein, Martin Gilbert and other well-known academic philosophers and historians. Flew's comment is quoted in the Wikipedia article "The Jew of Linz" and readers can peruse it at their leisure. The arguments of "The Jew of Linz", that is to say, are not "widely discredited" at all, though Enigma00 might better have expressed himself by writing (correctly) that they are not yet "widely accepted". This being a discussion page, I shall now turn to the matter of of how what I think is an important reference might be worded in a manner acceptable to Enigma00. I suggest that the entry might read something like "John Moran, who first reported that Wittgenstein had visited Russia in 1935, also quotes a Russian informant who states he was in Moscow in 1939 (following the Berlin negotiations) where he met the Soviet philosopher/academician Sophia Janowskaya a second time." Worded so, the comment is true and Janowskaya being the woman Stalin entrusted with translation of Marx' logical writings, the matter is philosophically relevant.Kimberley Cornish (talk) 04:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Setting aside polemical matters (for I have no wish to argue again about your work and/or its credibility/acceptability/etc.), I suppose we ought to come to the heart of the issue; why include this information at all? I quote trespassers william, who wrote above: "However referenced, I don't see any point to mention his visit to Moscow. Other travels written about in the paragraph are all related to the highly relevant issue, namely the efforts he made to save his family." As what you want added to the article doesn't really fit in in that context, I would suggest that it is an inappropriate place to put it (assuming we ought to include it at all). Mr. Cornish and I have disagreed before (and I will admit being in the wrong on more than one occasion), so I think we should have some other viewpoints in this discussion. I propose we ought to answer the following questions: 1) Is this information reliable; that is, is this one source, as it is, enough to warrant us thinking what it asserts is true? 2)If it is, is it necessary to include in the article? and 3) If we are going to include it, then where, since it doesn't seem to fit in where Mr. Cornish first put it? I think it's obvious where I stand, but I don't want to monopolize the discussion, nor do I want this to simply become a two-man battle that gets nowhere. Enigma00 (talk) 04:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the civilised response. Let me state why the Moran report matters. You wrote that testimony from Moran's article "is surely mistaken (such as one Soviet philosopher's impression that W. was interested in dialectical materialism and was well versed in the history of Soviet philosophy; there is no textual evidence of this in the W. corpus, no second-hand accounts of this from his students and friends." Quite to the contrary, PI 284 contains a phrase about "the transition from quantity to quality" that is the very purest Engels. W's Preface atributes the most consequential ideas of the Investigations to Piero Sraffa, who was not only Cambridge's most eminent Marxist economist, but a mole for Stalin. (Reference in John Costello's "Mask of Treachery" which I do not have to hand.) His friend Roy Pascal translated Marx's "German Ideology" into English. His Communist friends and/or students included Maurice Dobb, Nicholas Bakhtin, George Thomson, Maurice Cornforth, David Hayden-Guest, Julian Bell, all of whom were Party members. (Monk, pp.340-54) and some of whom (Cornforth, Bell) wrote of W's influence on them. Rush Rhees was a Marxist, albeit of Trotskyite persuasion. (Rhees “Recollections of Wittgenstein”, pp.200-09) Monk records George Thomson as saying that Wittgenstein “supported Communism in practice” and Monk reports Wittgenstein saying "I am a communist, at heart" (Monk, p.343). Both Douglas Gasking and A. C. Jackson who were former communist students of Wittgenstein’s (and who ended up in the Chairs of Philosophy at Melbourne University and Monash University) told me personally that when they knew him, “Wittgenstein was a Stalinist”. (Monk reports that “some of his students” mentioned Wittgenstein’s Stalinism, but it was Gasking and Jackson - at one stage the most eminent philosophers in Australia – who made the remarks Monk mentions.) Fania Pascal reports that Wittgenstein read Marx (Rhees, “Recollections of Wittgenstein, p.44.) Rosa Lichtenstein has extended my own researches on Wittgenstein’s politics, writing “when Wittgenstein visited Russia he met Sophia Yanovskaya, who was Professor of Mathematical Logic at Moscow University and one of the co-editors of Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts. [Cf., Yanovskaya (1983), in Marx (1983).] She apparently advised him to "read more Hegel" (which suggests he had already read some). [Monk (1990), p.351, and Rhees (1984), p.209.] In fact, Yanovskaya even went as far as to recommend Wittgenstein for the chair at Kazan University (Lenin's old college) and for a teaching post at Moscow University (Monk (1990), p. 351). These were hardly posts one would have offered to just anyone in Stalin's Russia in the mid-1930's, least of all to one not sympathetic to Communism”. Keynes’ letter to Maisky, the Russian ambassador stated that Wittgenstein “has strong sympathies with the way of life which he believes the new regime in Russia stands for." [John Maynard Keynes to Maisky, quoted in Rhees, p.199, also quoted more fully in Monk (1990), p.349.] Alan Turing wrote that Wittgenstein “was trying to introduce "Bolshevism" into Mathematics”. Monk (1990), pp.419-20; see also Hodges (1983), pp.152-54.] In short, Wittgenstein is reasonably suspected (from even the Sraffa Preface acknowledgement alone) of being seriously influenced by Marxism, whether through direct reading or via his friends/students. Any meeting with Yanowskaya (as editor of Marx's works) whether in 1935 or in 1939, is therefore of biographical interest, provided it is properly referenced. Where the reference should go is certainly up for discussion. Over to you ... Kimberley Cornish (talk) 05:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion for this Forum

This page was becoming quite unwieldy so I forked off two subtopics. Suggest this be done for more, possibly retrieving still vital elements from the archives. Suggest "Eccentricities", "Significance", and "Untersuchungen" as additional ones. Lycurgus 08:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Style

"Stalin's Soviet Union was a charnel house - a human abattoir for processing bodies in numbers that chill the imagination. Academic promotion was based above all on political reliability with the unreliable routinely tortured, starved to death and sometimes even buried alive. If Wittgenstein was offered various senior Soviet academic appointments in the mid-thirties - as he undeniably was - then he was considered politically reliable by Marxist professorial apparatchiks such as Sophia Janovskaya whose lives and families would have been forfeit had they made a wrong political assessment."

This is a tad emotional, verging on the hysterical, for an encyclopedia article. Can we stick to facts without the emotionally-charged "human abattoirs" thrown in? Also, suppositions of this sort ("if he was offered an appointment, then blah blah") are completely inappropriate.

Also, the bit about his alleged homosexuality is pure speculation and rumor.

First, it's not THAT emotional. Human bodies were indeed hung on meat hooks during the famine that Stalin visited on the Ukraine. Cannibalism was rife. And meat hooks were also used to assist over-worked interrogators in getting speedier confessions from recalcitrants. Marshal Blyukher reportedly was persuaded to confess by his interrogator using a spoon to scoop out one of his eyes. (Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow" is the locus classicus on the Ukrainian famine and I would recommend Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko's book "The Time of Stalin". Solzhenitsyn's material also goes without saying.) Our objector should offer us an example of how he might present these matters, as he or she demands, "unemotionally". The Wikipedia "Auschwitz" article, for example, states that "... the Nazi regime was designed to degrade prisoners to the standards of animals ...", which is true and doesn't seem particularly over-emotional to me. For the crimes in question (we are talking of genocide here, whether Nazi or Soviet), unemotional language fails to do justice to the facts and the demand to just quote figures itself falsifies what happened. So .. let us see an unemotional description of forced cannibalism from our objector! How OUGHT it be presented?

Secondly, on Wittgenstein's homosexuality, his diary entry on lying down several times with Francis Skinner, first thinking it was O.K. and then with "shame" sounds to me pretty conclusive. (See Monk, p.376.) This has to be read in tandem with his brother Hans' farewell suicide note over his homosexuality (Monk, p.12) and likewise for brother Rudi, mentioned in Bryan McGuinness' Wittgenstein biography. Two homosexual brothers and the reference to lying down with Skinner seem to me to win the field for W. W. Bartley. That is to say, unless one has independent evidence that Bartley is a liar, the onus of proof now lies squarely on those who assert Wittgenstein was not homosexual. His Apostles' membership and friendship with Keynes (with whom he shared a residence) and Lytton Strachey, not to mention the simple-minded lunacies of his intimate correspondence with David Pinsent (perhaps with a little intelligent reading between the lines) seems to me to establish the matter beyond doubt, or at the very least, to shift the onus of proof.

Thirdly, we are still owed an account of the raison d'etre for the Soviet offers to Wittgenstein. I don't myself see why our objector seeks to dismiss their crucial relevance with "blah, blah".Kimberley Cornish 10:40, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

->"So .. let us see an unemotional description of forced cannibalism from our objector! How OUGHT it be presented?"

This, along with your CAPS, is not helping your case. First you say it isn't emotional. Then you say, "unemotional language fails to do justice..." - so which is it? Is it matter-of-fact and unemotional or does it "have to be" emotional? My point: this is an article on Wittgenstein, not Stalin's "abattoirs" nor the holocaust nor meat hooks. Also, citing an article on Auschwitz (was _he_ a philosopher??) and Nazi war crimes doesn't really help your case. Why? This is an article on Wittgenstein. If you want to write about the horrors of Stalin's abattoirs, write an article on Stalin's abattoirs. But for an article on Wittgenstein it is superfluous, emotional, and obviously politically motivated.

->"His Apostles' membership and friendship with Keynes (with whom he shared a residence) and Lytton Strachey, not to mention the simple-minded lunacies of his intimate correspondence with David Pinsent"

So, just to get this straight, guilt by association is your proof? Along with requisite smears..

Most of what you have written is pure supposition and speculation. This isn't a term paper; it is an encyclopedia. Stick to facts and write suppositions elsewhere.

Will edit when I get the chance... Pallas Sun

I have already written on Wittgenstein's homosexuality in "Wittgenstein Contre Hitler", Presses Universitaires de France, 1999, pp.351-370. Wittgenstein's sister was a patient of Freud's, but the analyst the young Wittgenstein chose was not Freud, but Alfred Adler. Fragments of Adler's analysis are in the public domain, some of it in Adler's "The Neurotic Constitution" and others in a paper read before Freud and the other Viennese analysts and minuted, sufficiently, I argue, to identify his patient. Since the material has only been published in French, Pallas Sun might email me at kimberley.cornishATarts.monash.edu.au with the "AT" replaced by a "@" symbol. (This prevents automatic harvesting of web addresses by web crawlers.) I still have the original material in English and he/she might like to resume the discussion after having read it. Kimberley Cornish 07:44, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

lol. I see. I was wondering why all events in Wittgenstein's life was accompanied by insistent explanations on his apparent sexual preferences (as well as his general political views), for no apparent reason and in extremely elliptical language. Another thing - I was aware that he was a horrible teacher, when he finally had a shot at it, and accumulated a reputation for being crazy, in vague and unspecific ways. (Since I recognized this from the small biography in my version of Philsophical Investigations - that also fails to describe where exactly he taught at school, or on what subjects, for how long, etc.) - but.. I did not know that he nevertheless had great success with his teaching techniques when it came to "..children attuned to his interests and style of teaching, especially boys". ..Where does that come from? ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.151.153.102 (talk) 12:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Criticism

I think this article needs a section containing criticism of Wittgenstein's views. PJ 09:57, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I think this needs to be linked with the page Wittgenstein's Poker. This guy Wittgenstein is so revered yet, as this book shows, he was in fact a terrible person and his philosophy was defeated way back in the 50's. He was a violent warmonger and he also shares that sickly look of Jesus. Harry Frankfurt's recent book On Bullshit discusses how Wittgenstein was insensative to the suffering of others. Wittgenstein and Heidegger were like the same guy -both very influential and both were unethical with philosophies opposed to realism. Bertrand Russell and Emmanuel Levinas offer similar, yet more original and more important philosophies-Teetotaler 2/16/07 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.68.22.207 (talk) 07:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC).

Criticism, commentary, and where it ought to go

I agree—and it needs a lot more than that, besides. The section dealing with the Tractatus, for instance, makes repeated use of the phrase "some commentators" without any indication of who these commentators might be. Aside from the fact that this looks terribly unprofessional and verges on a weasely circumvention of Wikipedia's policy concerning original research, it is also very unhelpful to the reader. These phrases need to be replaced with internally-linked references to actual people. Furthermore, the stand-alone articles dealing with both of Wittgenstein's major works contain nothing at all dealing with the reception of these works. Considering that Wittgenstein is one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the 20th century, this is really absurd.

Maybe the most immediate question, in view of what seems to be a mania around here (i.e., in the Wikipedia) for linked pages rather than single comprehensive articles, is whether the situation ought to be rectified on the main Wittgenstein page or on the pages dealing with each work. My inclination would be to keep all the work-related info on the main page, and simply re-direct all searches for specific works to that page. But since that seems not to be the way things are done around here, I guess we should pare-down the work-related entries on the main page and flesh-out the entries on the work-specific pages (to avoid not only redundancy but, much worse, contradiction) with well-sourced sections on the reception of Wittgenstein's ideas.

But before I start deleting the fruits of other people's (and my own) labor, let's get some more input on this. What do the rest of you think: Should we expand the main-page subsections on his works, with re-directs to that page for work-specific searches? Or should we expand the work-specific pages and shrink the entries dealing with works on the main page? Buck 19:06, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. Verificationist reactions to Use "theory" and the Russell punch-in-the-stomach example suggested as starting point

I think the best thing to do would be, as you said, to shorten the sections in this article on his work and expand the separate articles dealing with those topics. Since this is a biographical article on Wittgenstein, perhaps only the biographical material is precisely relevant, and all the philosophical material can go on the other pages. As you said, the sections on his work need major, well, work. As for criticism, there seems to be a trend in which it is deemed necessary to have criticism and contrary viewpoints, instead of merely exegesis and commentary. Without slipping out of a NPOV I think it's possible to give a good exegesis and an a summary of his work's reception without including criticism all over the place. Wikipedia is not a place where competing philosophies battle it out, but where information on a philosopher is presented. That's why I think we ought to stick with exegesis and a general assessment of his work's reception. Certainly this will include the fact that many did (and still don't) care for his work, but this is distinct from putting actual criticism in the article. Enigma00 (talk) 18:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

By all means someone add some criticisms if they can - philosophical rather than moral, please. You will find though, that many people whose position differs from Wittgenstein's have not even read him and therefore don't offer an adequate criticism. For this reason it is wildly inaccurate to say that his position was "defeated in the 1950s."Cleeliberty (talk) 13:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Name pronunciation again

I corrected the IPA: <Ludwig> with a /t/ sound (cf. final devoicing) and <Wittgenstein> with a schwa. This is how it is usually pronounced in German (besides being German myself, I took courses on his philosophy, so I should know). However, he was Austrian, so I guess he himself might have pronounced his given name ['lu:tvi:k]. -- Anon.

Perhaps the common mistakes made by English speakers when pronouncing "Wittgenstein" is to (1) pronounce the "W" as in "Wind" when it ought to be pronounced more like the "V" in "Vintage", and (2) pronounce the "s" in "stein" as the "s" in "sign" when it ought to be pronounced more like the "sh" in "shine". PJ 10:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

It does seem a little strange that Ludwig should be given as "'luːtvɪç", when Wittgenstein is described as an Austrian philosopher. "'luːtvɪç" sounds very German German. (Susume)

Wittgenstein generally presented himself as a German, not Austrian, thus it may be his own useage. I have no idea, as I've never seen his signature. Ernham 15:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I can't see how his signature would be relevant, unless he signed his name in IPA characters. garik 15:59, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

"Whereof" translation

I just noticed SlimVirgin asking about the famous final proposition of the Tractus in the edit history. The translation that sounds slightly funny to many, but to my ear mellifluous, is from Ogden's 1922 translation (I think the first, and most widely read, English translatiou). You can find it online at: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - Hypertext of the Ogden bilingual edition

Proposition 7: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:57, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

You can translate it a number of ways, but that seems to be the well known one. "About which one cannot speak, one must be silent," etc. I might even like about which better personally because "Where" seems to imply a place. --Chadamir 16:24, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Nononono! "About that which one may not speak, one must shutup"! (or "If you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut.") Tomer ^TALK 06:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I was always taught to say: "Whereof one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence." And W. would have agreed with Tomer, except he'd have said: "If it's in principle impossible for you to know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut." ;-) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:51, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Or maybe: If you're gonna talk the talk, you better walk the walk! :-) (I still stand by the claim that Ogden translated it as above, whichever way is actually best). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:09, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Or perhaps as that great philosopher my father would say "Better to be seen and not heard". Tomer ^TALK 10:36, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I've always liked Frank P. Ramsey's version: What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either which is nice in it's oblique refernce to Wittgenstein's famous talent for whistling classical music. Stumps 10:47, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Hey! I have such a talent too! But my mom always characterized it as "annoying" rather than "famous"... Tomer ^TALK 10:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Sraffa

I'm going to add the economist Sraffa to the list of influences because (i) Wittgenstein recognizes him as such in the PI and (ii) Wittgenstein corresponded with Sraffa in addition to regularly talking with him and Ramsey at Cambridge.

New Testament

There is a trail that leads from Schopenhauer to Wittgenstein's interest in the New Testament. In the fourth book of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, he stated that Christ's denial of both egotism and willfullness indicated the way to salvation, deliverance, or release from suffering. Tolstoy enthusiastically embraced this outlook and wrote a book about the gospels. Wittgenstein read both Schopenhauer's and Tolstoy's opinions and he accepted their views. Lestrade 13:27, 12 October 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

Several writers have written about Schopenhauer's influence on Wittgenstein. I could never make sense of the first line of the Tractatus until I realized that it is almost equivalent to the first line of Schopenhauer's main work in which he wrote: The world is my representation. In Professor David Pear's book Wittgenstein, Chapter 1, he wrote that Wittgenstein "...took much of the framework of the Tractatus from Kant through Schopenhauer...." This is due to the fact that Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy is a relatively short, very readable explanation of Kant's critiques. But, for me, the most important and deep influence can be seen in Wittgenstein's ascetic attempt to withdraw from the world, his voluntary poverty as a result of giving away his inheritance, as well as his serious reading of the New Testament. These would be puzzling to someone who has not read Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Volume I, §68.Lestrade 22:53, 10 May 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Kant I

Wittgenstein learned Kant's philosophy by reading Schopenhauer's Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy. Schopenhauer's account was extremely readable and provided an epitome or résumé of Kant's thought. Lestrade 13:35, 12 October 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

The mere aquantance of Witt. with Kant isn't enought to count him as an influence, or at least an influence signifigant enough to be mentioned. Moreover, if Wittgenstein got his Kant through Schopenhauer, then Schopenhauer should be counted as the inluence just as I should count Kripke as the influence on me were I to read Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. I found it surprising that someone would count Kant as an influence and I think a better defence is in order. JoelSCollier 03:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Uhh, two words: transcendental self. Ernham 14:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

James

I believe William James should be listed as an influence, and perhaps something short written about Wittgenstein's reading of James -- from 1912 when he picks up James's Varieties of Religious Experience to its influence in his later ideas.

"New Wittgenstein

I started an article on the "New Wittgenstein" interpretation (this is not the best name, but it was the title of a recent book of essays by a bunch of the hotshots.) Please help expand and correct it. Many thanks, Sdedeo 15:45, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Russel?

Why is Russel listed both in Influences and Influenced?

• Wittgenstein read, studied under, and was influenced by Russell's Principles of Mathematics. When Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus, Russell himself admits, in the introduction to the Tractatus, that he is immensely impressed by the work, and subsequently Russell revised his work based on the Tractatus.

From Bertrand Russell's bio: Russell's influence on individual philosophers is singular, and perhaps most notably in the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was his student between 1911 and 1914. It should also be observed that Wittgenstein exerted considerable influence on Russell, especially in leading him to conclude, much to his regret, that mathematical truths were trivial, tautological truths. Evidence of Russell's influence on Wittgenstein can be seen throughout the Tractatus, which Russell was responsible for having published. Russell also helped to secure Wittgenstein's doctorate and a faculty position at Cambridge, along with several fellowships along the way. However, as previously stated, he came to disagree with Wittgenstein's later approach to philosophy, while Wittgenstein came to think of Russell as "superficial and glib," particularly in his popular writings.

Cheers! Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 14:30, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Zip It

We can't speak about anything that we haven't experienced. Has anyone experienced the witnessing of Wittgy's sexual activities? Has Wittgy publicly described his sexual activities? If not, what is all this talk about his liaisons and preferences?

It seems to me that there is an inverse relationship between interest in Wittgy's mental ideas and his physical acts. The less that someone is interested in what he wrote, the more they are interested in what he did.Lestrade 14:02, 31 December 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

Whether there is an inverse relationship or not between one's interest in substance and one's interest in personal life is neither here nor there. The articles in Wikipedia always have a section on "Life" or "Life and Times." With Ludwig especially, the issue of his sexual orientation is significant because of the unusually strong response from his hysterical executors (Ms. Anscombe, Rush Rhees) when W. W. Bartley III published his book on Wittgenstein's philosophy, which contained a small section (including photographs) on W's sexual orientation which is, by now, well documented. Admittedly, this area should comprise a small part of the article, but it should certainly be mentioned. Do you object to the section on "Einstein" concerning his marriage? NYCSEAN

Since no one was in LW's bedroom to witness such activities, we must consider all judgments about his sexual orientation as mere hearsay and gossip. He never made any public declarations regarding this topic. There was a time, you know, when people had friends who were not necessarily sexual partners. LW had deep friendships with several people, male and female. Activist homosexuals today are simply trying to legitimize themselves by claiming famous people as belonging to their ranks.Lestrade 01:40, 15 August 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Death

Cause of death was in error. Wittgenstein died of prostate cancer.

Added

Added trivia - supposed Asperger diagnose.

Please sign your posts by adding -~~~~ at the end. I removed the trivia section (copied below). It is fine to include this sort of information, but not without sources. Who speculated this? In what book? What are the reasons for this speculation? Add that sort of information and then copy it back to the main page, if you want.

It has been speculated that Wittgenstein had Asperger syndrome.

-Seth Mahoney 17:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

OK ! I´ll try. --jmak 19:13, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

header/bio summary

I think this article ties the life and work of LW too tightly, so the reader has to go through the detailed discussion of LW's philosophy to get a grip of LW's life. I think it would be a welcome improvement to edit the header and give the basics of W's birth and death, schooling and positions (Linz, Berlin, Cambridge), and then discuss LW's philosophy as much as you please in the article's body.

In the section "The Philosophical Investigations", it is said that Wittgenstein's "later philosophy" broke radically from the philosophy of the Tractatus in its view of the task of philosophy. This is a claim that I remember being made by published commentators that I read as an undergraduate student, 30 years ago, and I can't see it now any more than I could then. But this section makes the claim seem particularly hard to sustain; it is ironic that the particular example concerning The Good and The Beautiful are cited, as Wittgenstein refers specifically to this example in Tractatus 4.003, where he says "Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false, but senseless.".

I'm reluctant to edit, as I haven't studied Wittgenstein (or any kind of western philosophy) for a very long time, and only turned up this page after stumbling on an online Tractatus earlier today. And anyway, I'd *really* appreciate an attempt by a proponent of the earlier/later school of Wittgenstein criticism to make clearer in which ways the later Wittgenstein repudiated (rather than revised) the philosophy of the Tractatus. MrDemeanour 14:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

stylistic infelicities

Could something be done about the following sentence in the section 'Work'?

"Although many of Wittgenstein's notebooks, papers, and lectures have been published since his death, he published only one philosophical book in his lifetime, which means he's not a very good writer"

Philosophical Investigations

I'm a little uncomfortable with the recent revision of this section. Using the very terms 'sense' and 'nonsense' to illustrate how Wittgenstein thinks about sensible and nonsensical philosophical utterances seems needlessly opaque. I wasn't really that happy with the 'time'/'what is time' example that I preserved in the revision of this section that I did awhile ago. However, I think it's closer to being a helpful example than sense/nonsense, which seems designed to confound the uninitiated (rather than time or sense, why don't we use Wittgenstein's own damn examples in PI, like rule following, or reading? and by the way, where's the mention of private language here?). Maybe it's just supposed to be cute, not pedantic. But either way.

And maybe I'm just touchy about the say/show distinction because I tried employing it to solve the cogito in an undergrad paper (sigh), but I think it's misleading here. (1) LW never mentions it as such in the Investigations. Obviously you could apply it all over the place, but in PI, those applications would, I think, be parasitic on the primary notion of the illicit hypostatization of words (e.g. "mind"), which receives more immediate attention. (2) Quoting the Tractatus here doesn't really do justice to the radical difference between that book and the book in question. While there are obvious continuities, don't you think that, at least in a Wikipedia entry, it'd be disingenuous to downplay those (famous) differences? It makes PI look like nothing more than the Tractatus' bloated toady.--Figureground 01:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I would strongly support these comments. The saying/showing distinction is very much more a Tractatus thing than Philosophical Investigations - I do not think it is very helpful and it is certainly potentially misleading. The current text reads: "On Wittgenstein's account, language provides a way of coping with, what one might call, "everyday purposes," and it works well within that context. But when everyday language attempts to explain something beyond what it is able, problems arise." I think this is a poor interpretation. The point is not that language can cope with the mere everyday, but finds more sophisticated things difficult. Rather we use language well in certain situations and less well in others. The point of Wittgenstein's method is to help us become more sensitive to when our thinking becomes confused and our statements empty. We need to understand when the mechanism of language is doing something and when it is just spinning in the air without the connections that would give it meaning or import. I would be glad to see the text amended in this kind of direction but do not want to start an interpretation war. 4 July 2006 PGJ

I note these comments were made some time ago, but the section on the Investigations remains unchanged. I am willing to attempt a total rewrite of the section and will put the version here first for discussion. Davkal 12:42, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the following better captures the nature of the Investigations. The first two pargarphs have not been changed but the final three are completely different. Comments please.

Although the Tractatus is a major work, Wittgenstein is mostly studied today for the Philosophical Investigations (Philosophische Untersuchungen). In 1953, two years after Wittgenstein's death, the long-awaited book was published in two parts. Most of the 693 numbered paragraphs in Part I were ready for printing in 1946, but Wittgenstein withdrew the manuscript from the publisher. The shorter Part II was added by the editors, G.E.M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees. (Had Wittgenstein lived to complete the book himself, some of the remarks in Part II would likely have been incorporated into Part I, and the book would no longer have this bifurcated structure.)

It is notoriously difficult to find consensus among interpreters of Wittgenstein's work, and this is particularly true of the Investigations. Very briefly, Wittgenstein asks the reader to think of language and its uses as sets of language-games within which the parts of language function and have meaning in order to resolve the problems of philosophy. This view of language represents what many consider a break from the Wittgenstein in the Tractatus and, hence, meaning as representation. In the carrying out of such an investigation, one of the most radical characteristics of the "later" Wittgenstein comes to light. The "conventional" view of philosophy's "task", perhaps coming to a head in Bertrand Russell, is that the philosopher's task is to solve the seemingly intractable problems of philosophy using logical analysis (for example, the problem of "free will", the relationship between "mind" and "matter", what is "the good" or "the beautiful" and so on). However, Wittgenstein argues that these "problems" are, in fact, "bewitchments" that arise from the philosophers' misuse of language.

On Wittgenstein's account, language is woven into the fabric of life, and as part of that fabric it works unproblematically. Philosophical problems arise, on this account, when language is forced from its proper home and into a metaphysical environment, where all the familiar and necessary landmarks have been deliberately removed. Removed for what appear to be sound philosophical reasons, but which are, for Wittgenstein, the very source of the problem. Wittgenstein describes this metaphysical environment as like being on frictionless ice; where the conditions are apparently perfect for a philosophically and logically perfect language (the language of the Tractatus), and where all philosophical problems can be solved without the confusing and muddying effects of everyday contexts; but where, just because of the lack of friction, language can in fact do no actual work at all. There is much talk in the Investigations, then, of “idle wheels,” and language being “on holiday”, all of which are used to express this same idea of what is lacking in philosophical contexts. To resolve the problems encountered there, Wittgenstein argues, philosophers must “bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.” That is, philosophers must leave the frictionless ice and return to the “rough ground” of ordinary language in use.

Returning to the rough ground is, however, easier said than done. Philosophical problems having the character of depth, and running as deep as the forms of language and thought that have become habitual for the philosopher. Wittgenstein therefore speaks of “illusions” and “conjuring tricks” performed on our thinking by our forms of language and tries to break their spell by attending to differences between the superficially similar forms of expression that can lead to this type of confusion. For much of the Investigations, then, Wittgenstein tries to show how philosophers are led away from the ordinary world of language in use by misleading aspects of language itself. He does this by looking in turn at the development of various philosophical problems, from the general problem of language itself, through the notions of rules and rule following, and then on to some more specific problems in epistemology and philosophy of mind. Throughout these investigations, the style of writing is conversational with Wittgenstein in turn taking the role of the puzzled philosopher (on either or both sides of traditional philosophical debates), and that of the guide attempting to show the puzzled philosopher the way back: the “way out of the fly bottle.”

Much of the Investigations, then, consists of examples of how philosophical confusion is generated and how, by a close examination of the actual workings of everyday language, the first false steps towards philosophical puzzlement can be avoided. By avoiding these first false steps, philosophical problems themselves simply no longer arise and have therefore been dissolved rather than solved. As Wittgenstein puts it; "the clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear."

Davkal 14:43, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I've amended the section in question with a few further alterations. I still think the section needs work and will continue to work on it myself. My main reasons for putting the section in now is that the original section was primarily concerned with: a) the "say/show" distinction, which I think plays little or no part in the Investigations; and b) a formal distinction between sense and nonsense which is much less explicit in the Investigations (if there at all) than it is in the Tractatus.Davkal 10:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

FA without criticism

This is clearly a beatifully done hagiography, folks. But Wittgenstsin was anything but a saint: in philosophy and in life. Unfortunately, the only critical comments I have access to concern his personal life. Apart from that, there is (a sort of) brief rebutall of Wittgenstein's view that "philosophical problems do not exist" in Popper's Conjectures and Refutatation. I will get a link to the well-sourced Italian article by Piergiorgio Oddifreddi concerning the extremely wacky personality and behavior of Herr Witt, first of all. This stuff should not be whitwashed. It adds dimension and realism to the mix to show that Witt was a strange fellow indeed.--Lacatosias 09:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Here's the link, but I will obviously have to translate the relevent sections. [1]

"Come persona, Wittgenstein fu piuttosto singolare: aveva terrore degli insetti, e preferiva asfissiare nell'antitarme di cui cospargeva la casa; lavava i piatti nella vasca da bagno, e puliva il pavimento cospargendolo di foglie di tè bagnate che poi scopava via; camminava in un modo tanto esagitato che in un soggiorno in Irlanda i vicini gli impedirono di attraversare i loro campi, perché spaventava le pecore; indossò l'uniforme dell'impero austro-ungarico (che ormai non esisteva più) per anni, dopo la fine della prima guerra mondiale; si fece operare di calcoli da sveglio perché non si fidava dei medici, e volle seguire l'operazione con un sistema di specchi; era contrario al voto alle donne perché quelle che aveva conosciuto erano tutte idiote (e quando incontro Elizabeth Anscombe, che non lo era, prese a chiamarla 'vecchio mio'); invitato al Circolo di Vienna per discutere di filosofia, vi leggeva invece poesie volgendo le spalle all'uditorio.

Come amico, era mortalmente esigente: di Russell perse la stima perché, scrivendo soltanto 'tascabili d'urto', non correva più il rischio di ammazzarsi facendo filosofia; con Moore si seccò molto quando questi, dopo un infarto, rifiutò di discutere troppo a lungo, perdendo così l'occasione di schiattare da filosofo, 'sul campo'. Naturalmente, finì col bisticciare con tutti (Russell, Moore, Ramsey, Keynes, Waismann, Carnap, Popper) prima o poi, e col troncare i rapporti per periodi più o meno lunghi. D'altra parte, la sua compagnia fu considerata pestilenziale, da doversi evitare per periodi troppo prolungati (soprattutto nella fase in cui pretese di confessare i suoi 'peccati'4 come espiazione: sua e, probabilmente, altrui).

In amore, non era comune. Non certo perché omosessuale,5 quanto perché amò amare all'insaputa dell'amato (ad esempio, David Pinsent, a cui dedicò il Tractatus), e disgiungere per quanto possibile il sentimento dal sesso (ad esempio, proponendo un matrimonio in bianco a Marguerite Respinger).6

Anche come insegnante, Wittgenstein non fu (fortunatamente) comune. Da maestro elementare distribuì botte (non simboliche) ai maschi e tirate di capelli alle femmine, arrivò a far perdere conoscenza ad un bimbo malato che morì tre anni dopo di leucemia, e finì sotto processo (dimettendosi subito dopo) per aver fatto sanguinare ripetutamente una bambina. Da professore universitario si vantava di non aver studiato le opere di altri filosofi (sostenendo che lo facevano soltanto gli accademici, cioè i filosofi fasulli), e si rifiutò di far lezione a troppi studenti (una trentina), preferendo dettare a pochi di essi degli appunti che gli altri potevano leggere a casa (e che divennero il Libro blu). Sconsigliò sempre sia la filosofia come professione che la carriera accademica, sostenendo (certo a ragione) che non è possibile essere allo stesso tempo persone serie ed oneste e professori universitari.7

La filosofia era per lui una sofferenza: credeva che non fosse possibile pensare decentemente se non si vuole farsi del male, e che pensare fosse come nuotare (nel senso che si ha tendenza a stare in superficie, mentre andare in profondità richiede uno sforzo). Si lamentava che il suo pensiero fosse sistematicamente frainteso (oltre che plagiato), senza abbandonare però la pretesa di esporlo soltanto in forma poetica (criterio in base al quale la sua opera andrebbe forse giudicata8)."

As a person, Wittgenstien was rather unusual: he was terrified of insects and preferred to asfixiate himself in the insecticide (?) with which he inundated his home; he washed his dishes in the bathtub, and cleaned the floors by covering them with tea leaves which he then broomed away; he walked in such an excited or agitated manner that during a vacation in Ireland his neighbors prevented him from passing across through their fields, because he frightened away the sheep; he continued to wear the Austro-Hungarian militray uniform (which no longer existed) for years after the end of WWI; he had himself operated on without anesthetic because of his fear of doctors and he insisted on following the entire procedure with a system of mirrors; he opposed the vote for women because all of those whom he had known were idiots (and when he met Elizabeth Anscomb, who was not, he took to calling her "my old chap"); when he was invited to participate in the mettings of the Vienna Circle in order to discuss philosophy, he would sit and read poetry instead, with his back turned to his audience.

As a friend, he was mortally demanding: he lost his esteem for Russell because, by writing popular paperbacks, he no longer ran the risk of killing himnself doing philosophy; he got extrenyl bored with Moore when the latter, after having a heart attack, refused to debate at length with him, losing in this way the opportunity to finish himnself off philosophizing "on the field". Naturally, he ended up fighting with everyone (Russell, Moore, Ramsey, Keynes, Waismann, Carnap, Popper) sooner or later, and struncating his relations for more or less lengthy periods of time. On the othet hand, his freindship was considered pestilential, to be avoided at all costs for long periods of time (above all, during the phase in which he claimed the need to confess his "sins" as expiation: his, and, probably, those of others).

(to be continued)....--Lacatosias 10:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

This looks like a collection of stories which are mainly also found in Monk or Edmonds and Eidinow, and sometimes confused - sweeping with tea leaves was not an uncommon cleaning method at the time (several references here, for example), Oddifreddi is confusing the reasons for falling out with Russell and Moore (and possibly also Sraffa), Wittgenstein never had any sort of friendship with Popper, and one of the remarkable things about his personality was that despite the fact that he was undoubtedly eccentric and hugely demanding, so many people valued his friendship and kept it up despite the demands. Wittgenstein tended to be the one to break relationships, often (as was the case with Sraffa) when people wanted to remain friends but not on his terms. WP:V is key here - if Oddifreddi has a source for any of this, that's fine, but what you've translated doesn't look to me to be very accurate. --ajn (talk) 10:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I cannot further verify the claims, that's why I'm posting this here. Otherwise, I would have just edited the article directly. In any case, the sources cited by Oddifreddi as the basis for his biographical sketch are listed below. I don't have access to these books and I'm not in the best of health at the moment, so I'll leave it up to others to do the research if they would like. The article, however, strikes me as thoroughly hagiographical. Just because some of these charges may be off-base (though you actually haven't idenitifed one that is, but just said that they are corroborated in other biographical accounts, oddly enough), doesn't mean they all are. His opposition to the vote for women and his calling Anscombe "old chap", for example, are quite interesting and quite revealing if true.

- Bertrand Russell, Autobiografia, volume II, Longanesi, 1969.
- David Pinsent, Vacanze con Wittgenstein, Boringhieri, 1992.
- Paul Engelmann, Lettere di Ludwig Wittgenstein con ricordi, La Nuova Italia, 1970.
- Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bompiani, 1964.
- Rush Rhees (curatore), Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford University Press, 1984.

A livello macroscopico, due biografie forniscono, rispettivamente, un'idea generale ed una visione dettagliata:

- Georg von Wright, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Schizzo biografico, nel libro di Malcolm citato.
- Ray Monk, Wittgenstein, Bompiani, 1991.

Ultimatalely, I'm much more interested that there be a criticism of ideas section, because NO philosopher should be treated as off-limits, not even Wittegentsein who was one of the greatest of the century (better, espesically not Wittgenstin who was one of the greatest of the last century).--Lacatosias 12:08, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

--Lacatosias 12:08, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have access to several of these. You seem confused about the "charges" - are you saying the article needs to stress that Wittgenstein walked in a funny way and frightened sheep? Or that there needs to be some criticism of his philosophical ideas? If the latter, I'd agree (there also needs to be some more exposition of the different interpretations of his writings). But that's not what Oddifreddi provides as far as I can tell from the two paragraphs you've translated - he seems to have gathered up trivial information about personal eccentricities from a variety of mainly secondary sources. Wittgenstein produced strong reactions either way in people, and many of these stories of eccentricity (from admirers or enemies) need to be taken with a pinch of salt. The fact that the article isn't stuffed with trivial anecdotes about what a loony Wittgenstein was, doesn't make it a hagiography. I don't see anything in the article to suggest he was a saint. --ajn (talk) 14:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

No, of course I'm not interested in "stuffing" the article "trivialities" and I'm not confusing anything. Basically, 1)I would think that the biography could be extended and improved a bit with a few salient facts. Not to demonstrate how loony Wittgentsin was, but how human he was. It's rather boring. See, for example, the biography of John von Neumann. 2) A criticism section might perhaps be added along the lines of the article on Karl Popper, this one I wrote for Jerry Fodor or this one I wrote on Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I just wanted to bring this to people's attention, not argue about it for several hours. Good day. --Lacatosias 16:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Imho the first bombastic sentence should be toned down: Wittgenstein did not contribute anything to the philosophy of mathematics and very little to(the foundation of) logic. When his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics appeared posthumously, they were met critically, at most with condescence, by the professional community (see Benacerraf and Putnam). There is a consensus that somehow Wittgenstein had missed the point of Gödel's work. The other possible contribution to mathematical philosophy should be the Tractatus but it does not contain anything specific, apart some criticism of Russell's logicism. The use of 'truth tables' is credited also to Emile Post, so it is difficult to see what would amount to 'ground-breaking work' in logic or philosophy of mathematics. It could be asserted perhaps that Wittgenstein has contributed to these topics indirectly. It would be easy to edit: "...contributed ground-breaking work to contemporary philosophy, primarily on the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind".85.187.217.182 13:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Just as a note, since you mention Putnam, he did come to feel much more positively about Wittgenstein's understanding of Gödel's work than you might be aware; see, for example, [2]. I do think you are correct about the mainstream mathematics community's rejection of Wittgenstein's views on the philosophy of mathematics and foundations of logic, but this does not deny their influence, or their importance in Wittgenstein's thought. -Chinju 15:16, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I had in mind the book Philosophy of Mathematics (selected readings) ed. Benacerraf and Putnam.

Anyaway, my point was that Lacatosias is not exaggerating when he talks about hagiography; the first sentence sets the tone. 85.187.217.182 22:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Culture and value?

I read Culture and Value recently (in part due to the description on this page) and it seemed certainly as though Wittgenstein was influenced by Kierkegaard, but he never goes so far as to "critique" his work. I mean, he only had a few lines in which he even referred to Kierkegaard, compared to 3+ times that amount discussing the work of Shakespeare.... Does anyone with knowledge in this area agree with this?

I agree. There is no evidence that Wittgenstein's engagement with Kierkegaard consisted of anything more than seeing in Kierkegaard's work Wittgenstein's own religio-philosophical views - and, for that reason, regarding Kierkegaard's work as 'profound'. Wittgenstein had a tendency to read other authors in this way. Kierkegaard's thought does not, I think, positively shape Wittgenstein's thought as does the work of Schopenhauer, Weininger, Spengler, Tolstoy or even Dostoevsky. Best, Maxim662 17:36, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

When I read Culture and Value, he does discuss many aspects of religion that Kierkegaard brings up, especially in K's later works. His discussions on the Gospels, Scriptures, and Christ's Resurrection are all highly reminscient of things K discusses in Christian Discourses and Without Authority. And I agree with Max to an extent, but there are other scholars that have made an interesting account of the K and W relationship: [3] Poor Yorick 04:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

as i recall, that book is a collection put together by an editor, not composed by W himself. As such, if you want to see if he deals with K, you should go look at the whole of the notebooks to see where those selections were pulled from, and perhaps you'll find more relevant material. --Buridan 23:10, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Zettel

Is there any reason why Zettel has been excluded from the list of works by Wittgenstein. I know that the book consists of Wittgenstein's clippings from his own manuscripts, but they were compiled by serious Wittgensteinian scholars and are widely regarded as sheding light on LW's thought and even providing some important insights into his views on philosophy of action which are not really dealt with elsewhere.Davkal 20:36, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

On reversions

Reversions ought not be made of correct edits back to previous versions that are demonstrably false. Since Austria did not exist as an independent state in July 1939, the 1.7 tonnes of Wittgenstein gold were NOT "2% of the Austrian gold reserves". They were, however, comparable in value/cost to that of the British Spitfire fleet in 1939, after four years of British rearmament. The original placed the 1.7 tonne transfer into historical context, whereas the reversion does not and simply perpetuates the falsehood. Following the declaration of war on September 3rd, this sort of transfer was a capital offence (Aiding and abetting the enemy.) Its historical significance ought not to be edited away without some sort of explanation for the reversion. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.28.122.204 (talk • contribs) .

The rationale is that Wikipedia is not a place for original research (see WP:NOR), and Kimberley Cornish's nutty theories should not be given undue weight in the article (see WP:NPOV). The article is unbalanced as it is. --ajn (talk) 07:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Surely the only thing that matters is if the edit is true or false. Austria had no gold reserves, contrary to what the uncorrected text asserted and this was duly corrected. After reversion, the unsuspecting reader seeking information from Wikipedia will learn falsely that the 1.7 tonnes of gold transferred to the Nazis was 2% of the Austrian gold reserves. Something wrong, here, surely. Nothing whatever to do with "Cornish's nutty theories" and no original research required; just plain vanilla knowledge of national political boundaries in 1939 Europe. I agree with you, however, that the article is unbalanced.

Addendum: Look, if you're not happy with the Spitfire comparison - which is actually correct, if you do the multiplication I provided, and which I think places what the Wittgensteins did in context - why don't we just agree to give the pounds sterling equivalent in 1939 of 1.7 tonnes of gold? (Or 2006, for that matter, or some other objective measure of its value - you choose whichever you think is reasonable.) I don't really care HOW it is corrected, so long as it IS corrected and we don't have a reference to a non-existent independent Austria. "Wittgenstein's Poker" was simply wrong on this, though I suspect the authors might have been thinking about pre-Anschluss Austria. However that might be, there is no excuse for perpetuating their error in Wikipedia.

After some weeks, I've corrected the sentence in question (the one that mentions the 1.7 tonnes of gold) and changed "Paul Wittgenstein" to "the Wittgenstein family", since Paul was not solely responsible for the transfer. Given the obvious reluctance of other editors to have the figure of US$50 million mentioned, I have not added it to the article. For all that, it remains true that the Wittgenstein assets donated to the Nazis a week or so before the British declaration of war, was about equivalent in value to the Spitfire fleet when Great Britain commenced hostilities.

Section about his death removed

Sorry! I managed to forget to add an edit history when I removed the following:

There is, however, an alternative version of Wittgenstein's demise. An increasing number of secondary sources  
highlight Wittgenstein's daily routine of visiting a tree at a nearby college, of which he was deeply fond. They then
go on to claim that Wittgenstein died the day after this particular tree was cut down. Although this is (if it is 
true) probably a coincidence, it adds an extra element of unique brilliance at the man's life. Regarding the truth of
the claim, the tree does indeed appear to have been chopped down on the correct day (one of the authors supporting  
this story claims to have actually met the man who did it). However, the jury is still indefinitely out.

I find it all a bit odd. First, it doesn't tell us which secondary sources - or where they draw their information from. Second, it's not clear precisely what the relationship is supposed to be between the tree getting chopped down and Wittgenstein's death: did it just make him want to give up? And how is this an extra element in his unique brilliance? Why is it especially brilliant to die the day after your favourite tree does? Maybe there's something I'm missing... garik 11:49, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions

(1) Might it be useful to "update" Wittgenstein's contributions to various academic and philosophical inquiries? It seems that Wittgenstein's use of language games and place of language in experience has experienced something of a revival among some postmodern academics.

In particular, his own transition from "representational" to "lived" semiotic is in itself interesting as a presage of the movement from a "representational" to a "community" derivation of language / meaning.

I'm no Wittgenstein expert (just stumbled upon this interesting, if frustrating, discussion) and any credentials I might have had to the "philosopher's club" have probably long expired, but a part of my doctoral work did float in and around meaning, words, classification and the uses we make of them--via semiotics. Thus I am eminently unqualified to write such a piece, though I can see a hole on the bookshelf where something like it might just fit.

That is, philosophy did not end with Adorno, or even with Habermas. Some young buck out there, can you tell whether this connection (Wittgenstein's work on language and postmodern approaches to community-as-language) has developed at all in contemporary (21st century) philosophical work?

Might be nice to see something pragmatic as well as historic. . .(of course they are not mutually exclusive. . .)

(2) On the issue of Wittgenstein's alleged personal quirks:

Given the absolute delight with which students of philosophy embrace all that is eccentric in the lives of the authors with whose works they are cursed to try and read (see Philosopher's Song. . .any campus)

and

the somewhat unsettling popular idea that the most brilliant men (almost always men) are proportionately looney (perhaps explaining the less-brilliant lives of mostly normal people?) as well as

the difficulty of actually nailing down with precise sources most of what happened in Europe during either of the "world wars," but in particular the second--there was an awful lot of bombing and burning by both sides

it might be difficult to come up with primary source material that would either confirm or deny even positions held forth in academic lectures but unpublished, let alone personal eccentricities (after all, if the people writing about these eccentricities were themselves brilliant, their own opinions of normalcy should be correspondingly suspect, see the "it takes one to know one" argument)

So

perhaps we should cobble together a "tribute" page to which all of the strange and probably unprovable and just as probably unimportant traits, stunts, personal traits, learned tricks and inept relationships of all such "brilliant but eccentric" wiki subjects can point?

Thus the eccentricities (which, if not so important, are entertaining enough that folks will be motivated to search dilligently for evidence enough to warrant a smirk) can be acknowledged with a neat and proper cite through a proper point to another wikipedia page

but

the "eccentricities" page itself would be self-evidently immune from the precision of source usually required of biographies of thought, (by the way, why is it we assume that someone's date and place of birth is important to the formation of their intellectual ideas?)

and would be a riotous read. (potentially Wiki's most commonly cited article)

This might satisfy both the "biography of ideas" and the "biography of real peoples behind the ideas" folks by allowing the hint or shadow of perhaps something utterly crazy to fall across the screen without an actual commission of the crime of citing one wack-o's account of another wack-o (non-traditional spelling intentional).

Paradoxically, this page might already exist, and merely lacks more "slept with sheep but only within a platonic framework" entries in order to accumulate enough word-weight to produce a big enough ripple when it is dropped into the swimming pool of ideas. After all, it wouldn't probably be listed where any boring (and thus non-brilliant) person might expect. . .

Roy 07:45, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Religion

Why are Wittgenstein's religious views clustered together in the WWI section? They clearly progressed over time, so I think it would be sensible to have a solely religion section/subsection. The Walrus 18:15, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Homosexual?

Moved to it's own page. Lycurgus 08:09, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

"Jewcentric rambling"?

Moved to Talk:Ludwig_Wittgenstein/SemitismAndHitler. Lycurgus 08:22, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

He is regarded as...

"He is regarded as" is true if a small group regard him as a great philosopher, or if a large group regard him as a great philosopher, or if everyone regards him as a great philosopher. There is no need for "some" or "many". Banno 22:13, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

everyone doesn't regard him as such, but surely some people do. If it was less exaggerated of a claim, it would suffice to say it without "some". For instance, "he was an important and influential philospher ..." Ernham 20:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Who does not regard him as influential? They would be either foolish or ignorant. Whether he is "important" may be debatable, so my wording[4] is preferable. This is about English usage, not opinion. Banno 20:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

That's the wrong queston. You forgot the qualifier, the weasel-like usage of "most". Who doesn't regard him as "one of the MOST influential", Well, I can think of about my entire Philosophy department at university(save for one with a symbolic-logic "fetish"). His important contributions were mostly esoteric.Ernham 20:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

So are you saying that your Philosophy Department is foolish or that it is ignorant? Being influential does not mean being correct, as the present U.S. president so ably demonstrates. Nor does begin esoteric imply that one is not influential. What do you think that "influential" means? I understand "W. is influential" to mean that he influenced other philosophers. Are you wishing to claim that this is not the case? My apologies for reverting your other edit. Banno 21:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

again, his "influence" in philosophy was moderate to minimal to the majority of the discipline. If anyone believes otherwise, show me any profound philosophers hence that cite him as someone that influenced their work. He introduced some novel concepts but was generally "mor of the same" when it comes to philosophy.Ernham 14:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Banno, don't bother arguing with this guy who obviously doesn't understand the various strictures concerning "weasel words". Just find fifteen minutes to spend in an adequately-stocked library, and find a suitable quotation by an authority about Wittgenstein's importance. For example, perusing my copy of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I see that Bertrand Russell wrote in the introduction that the contents of this monograph "makes it one which no serious philosopher can afford to neglect." Were my personal library less limited, I'm sure that I could find several quotations that would prove even more conclusively Wittgenstein's importance. -- llywrch 23:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, that's brilliant. First the intelligent use of 'weasel words,' then the suggestion to look at the introduction to the Tractatus, an introduction Wittgenstein himself raged against for misrepresenting his work. 24.88.76.172 07:11, 9 February 2007 (UTC)Singlen

I'm not sure whether the issue at stake here is whether Wittgenstein has has been influential to most people, or whether he's one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century ... but I just made an adjustment of the last edit by 24.88.76.172, who is pretty obviously a non-signed-in Ernham. It seems to me that to say that the guy was considered (whether by some, by many, or by most) to be "the most significant philosopher" is a much stronger claim than my version, that he is considered to be "among the most significant philosophers" since the latter admits of a bit more room for people to agree to disagree. That is, for people who have a pet favorite philsopher whose name isn't L. Wittgenstein not to be irritated when they see our article's text, and feel the need to edit it. Actually, I guess my version is pretty similar to Banno's, only with more qualifiers about how his work has been influential, which I don't think can be denied. Buck Mulligan 13:24, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Preamble

Whoever Tonyberge is (his user page seems to be inactive), he might want to actually read the body of the article before adding what is basically a lot of redundancy to the preamble. The article is already bordering on too long, and we don't need repetition. Also, much of what Tonyberge has written in the aforementioned preamble is rather one-sided, in terms of the general direction of Wittgenstein's thought, as well as it's account of the general drift of philosophy and science in the latter half of the twentieth century. Finally, when making additions of the kind that he's made, it's customary to add a note in the editing summary space to let others know what you've been up to (even some of our more contentious editors are good enough to do that). Thanks in advance. Buck Mulligan 18:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of my preamble was to introduce Wittgenstein to a general audience. One that isn´t familiar with his work. The preamble as it is will not raise immediate attention. This could lead the general audience not to read any further. It is my opinion that a preamble should deliver some punchlines straight away; especially with a philosopher who is still not a well known name outside of academic circles. The entire article, all though well written and argumented for an insider audience, still leaves him somewhat obscure. A publisher who would put the exsisting preamble text on the back of the cover of a book about Wittgenstein, would probably not sell a lot of copies. Tonyberge 20:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the preamble is a bit dry as it currently stands, and that a very casual reader might not stop to peruse the entire article solely on the strength of its introduction. However, fortunately for us, we're not in the business of selling books or evangelizing for any particular subject. As far as delivering punchlines is concerned, you have a point, but what you added was more of a short history of 2500 years of western thought (Plato thru Wittgenstein, the "end of metaphysics" (as it were), etc.), and some of your phrasing is certainly not voiced in such a way that an "outsider" to his thought would understand what W. was all about.

For instance, you have: "Wittgenstein made clear that metaphysical ideas could not be known, but that these concepts only had a certain meaning in the context of language." I'm pretty sure I know what you're trying to say, but it's not a great bet that anyone who wasn't already well-versed in the man's writings would. You continue, a bit later: "It is not that we can deny that there are metaphysical rules, for instance related to aesthetics or ethics, but we can't express these in our spoken language in a verifiable way." Again, to anyone who didn't know much about the topic at hand, the notion of a "metaphysical" rule (as opposed to a rule, per se) would probably be less than transparent. The same goes for the non-contextual talk of verificationism, which--again, to a non-reader of Wittgenstein--sounds like the guy ought to have been a member of the Vienna circle. Finally, the mention of Popper, who we both know had some big problems with verificationism, seems to further confuse things. For my money, Wittgenstein can't be called either a verificationist of a falsificationist. But of course plenty of people disagree with me about that.

Which brings me to the other reason I removed the preamble. My experience with these philsophy-oriented articles is that people, myself included, are tempted to write them as though they were writing something rather more argumentative than a research paper, and then frustration sets in when other people don't see eye-to-eye with one's take on a particular issue (again, myself included). And of course, Wittgenstein is particularly troublesome this way, thanks to his mid-career change in direction, as well as the ambiguity of his argumentative/investigative style.

But having said all this, I do agree that the preamble as it stands isn't exactly going to set the world on fire. Maybe the thing to do would be to add a brief introductory/overview section, after the preamble but before jumping right into his life story. The Heidegger page might be a nice model to follow in this case. Notice, though, how brief and general the introduction is in that case--nothing very specific is said about his place in the tradition, apart from the fact that his thinking: (a) concerned the nature of being, (b) was quite revolutionary, (c) tended to strongly divide people, and (d) had a major influence on a lot of famous people who went on to become very influential in their own right. (Well, that, and: (e) he was briefly a Nazi--but that, thank God, isn't relevant to our discussion of Wittgenstein...) So what do you say? Buck Mulligan 22:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the Heidegger like introduction is a good idea. There is certainly a challenge in making general statements about Wittgenstein and his importance, in my opinion monumental importance, and at the some time choose the right words that are accessible and objective. I will post a new version over the weekendTonyberge 12:06, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I have put in a short introduction trying to describe the main themes in a couple of sentences, in order to provide some highlights to the reader that is not familiar with the manTonyberge 16:47, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

intro

Wittgenstein philiosophy and ideas have evolved during his life but he has always been concerned with the importance of language and its relation to the way we think. A lot of his investigations went into how we us our language to describe the world around us and how we formulate theories. His thoughts uncover the limitations of the use of spoken language to gain knowledge, achieve certainty or make sensefull statements. His ideas and investigations have had a profound impact on different disciplines like metaphysics, ontology, psychology and epistomology and are considered by some as a major turning point in the history of Philosophy.

"Sensefull"?!? The first sentence is grammatically incorrect, since he is dead. Wittgenstein did not specialise in spoken language, nor was he interested in how we formulate theories so much as how we speak about them. The remainder is a string of motherhood statements, held together by weasels. Overall, it doesn't actually say anything. Banno 19:18, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of the introduction has come up in discussions in how to get a layman introduced to Wittgenstein.See preamble.Why don´t you give it a try? I´m curious to see with what you will come up, Banno Tonyberge 03:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Kant II

What evidence is there of a significant influence on Wittgenstein from Kant? According to his biographers, he read very little historical philosophy. Transcendentalism? Doesn't sound right. Banno 19:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you have any working knowledge of philosophy and/or transcendentalism? (or Kant or.... Wittgenstein?)It seems rather unlkley given your comment. Edit: though the use of Transcendentalism can be confused for tangently related things. "Transcendentality" is more clear, but there shouldn't be any confusion on what is Kantian.Ernham 19:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Wittg never read Kant. He learned about Kant from reading Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy.Lestrade (talk) 01:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Despite one's natural unease at Ernham's insulting tone, there yet remains the specific reference to Kant (and mention of his name) in Tractatus 6.36111, concerning Kant's problem about the left hand and the right hand that are incongruent to each other despite their internal relational identity. Granted this is not proof that Wittgenstein READ Kant, but equally the assertion "Wittg never read Kant" needs some support beyond the mere assertion. Bernard Williams, in the Rotal Institute of Philosophy volume devoted to Wittgenstein, claimed that the Tractatus contained a "transcendental deduction". He might have been completely wrong, of course, but Williams was a philosopher whose opinions were always worth listening to.122.107.219.113 (talk) 04:44, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

There is certainly some merit to this discussion. In the writings later published as 'Culture and Value', W. does refer to Kant, saying that something he (W.) had just written "has to do with the Kantian solution to the problem of philosophy" (pg. 10, Chicago University Press edition). To me this says that he has at least read SOME kind, and not just gotten it all second-hand. Actually it seems W. read more historical philosophy than he is often given credit for, and this seems apparent both in his remarks (he mentions Platonic dialogues several times in the Investigations and Culture and Value), and in memoirs written about him. He certainly wasn't familiar with everything, but to say he read 'very little' historical philosophy is a bit of a stretch. Enigma00 (talk) 07:03, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

"He took much of the framework of the Tractatus from Kant through Schopenhauer, whom he had read and admired…." David Pears, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Penguin Books, page 40.Lestrade (talk) 21:12, 19 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Notable Ideas

I made a change under Notable Ideas on the sidebar, because what was there regarding his later thought was actually something that can be applied to both his early and later philosophy, viz., that philosophical problems arise from confusions involving language.

I have tried to change it such that it reflects more acurately the shift in his thought. Enigma00 05:39, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I see that somebody has changed the notable ideas section without notice here, and the change is fine. But I felt I should add something to do with his private language argument.Enigma00 04:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

First acquaintance with Turing

The article currently has Wittgenstein out of the UK during all of 1937, but the standard biography of Alan Turing (Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence, London: Unwin, 1983), has him introduced to Turing during the summer of 1937 (p.136). Can anyone resolve this discrepancy? Thanks. Itsmejudith 20:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

The article, like all the Wittgenstein hagiographies, needs to be read with a very sceptical eye. Wittgenstein was in Moscow in 1935 and again in 1939, according to a report made to John Moran by Sophia Janovskaya. The fact that the Soviets offered him the chair in Philosophy at Kazan (which had been Lenin's university) and an academic post at Moscow University, means he was working for the Soviets. (Any other hypothesis, given Stalin's strangle-hold over ideology, is inconceivable.) This fact casts a very black cloud over his role at Trinity College Cambridge, from which Kim Philby and Wittgenstein's fellow homosexual Apostles, Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess were recruited. Turing - who attended Wittgenstein's lectures - was not only, like Wittgenstein, a homosexual logician, but also, because of his Bletchley Park work, the Cullinan diamond amongst the British intelligence crown jewels that Stalin pilfered so successfully. Theodore Redpath's memoir ("Ludwig Wittgenstein", Duckworth, 1990, p.46) records Wittgenstein as being at Cambridge in January 1937 and again, towards the end of that year. My money is on Redpath and Hodges being correct, not the Wittgenstein-worshipping article writers. Alan Turing, Oliver Strachey and others at Bletchley, were groomed by Wittgenstein because of their intelligence value to Stalin. Kimberley Cornish 22:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

There's not a single shred of documentary evidence linking Wittgenstein to Soviet intelligence, nor has the suggestion of a link ever been made by any serious historian. With the publication of the Mitrokhin archive in 1999, we now have extensive knowledge of the Cambridge spyring, including the circumstances of their recruitment and detailed reports of their subsequent handling by the likes of Arnold Deutsch, in addition to Russian accounts and the confessions and memoirs of Philby et al. The fact that such a sensational disclosure has failed to leave ANY noticeable historical trace is damning. In short, there are no longer any "gaps" for such a ludicrous conspiracy theory to fill (unlike speculation on, say, the identity of Jack the Ripper). Barring a massive coverup by the sinister forces of homosexual logic. Or that evil Wittgenstein-worshipping cult. 88.107.104.248 17:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we might simply agree that Wittgenstein was at Cambridge for part of 1937! The references supplied on the other matters do not inspire much confidence. The "Times Literary Supplement" (Nov. 26 1999) commented witheringly on "The Mitrokhin Archive"; 'Did not the KGB have some sort of time-accounting or performance reports as all bureaucracies do? The sheer volume of the materials Mitrokhin is said to have copied by hand (tens of thousands of documents) makes one wonder how he could have found the time.'

It is reported that none of the 25,000 or so Mitrokhin documents are originals or even photocopies of originals. All we have is the assurance that a Russian clerk first walked into the U.S. embassy in Riga to offer his hand-written material and was told to get lost. Later he managed to walk into the British embassy, which graciously accepted his generous offer and ran him as an agent in place in the Russian archives. Those stupid, stupid Russians, taken in by yet another spectacular British intelligence coup! Sadly, the fact that the MI6 agent who smuggled the material from the dacha (Richard Tomlinson) was imprisoned by a British court, must sadly cast doubt on the Mitrokhin material. However our objector has a fallback reference to clinch matters ... wait for it! ... the memoirs of KIM PHILBY! Not much doubt that Philby told the truth about who recruited him! Unfortunately, Philby was a KGB officer with the blood of untold numbers of Britons on his head and his testimony - how to put this? - cannot be regarded as reliable by any person capable of reflection about anything at all. Offering Philby as a referee in this matter shows a quite astonishing naivety that rather disqualifies our objector from even understanding the issues, let alone presuming to participate in their public discussion.

Stalin's Soviet Union was a charnel house - a human abattoir for processing bodies in numbers that chill the imagination. Academic promotion was based above all on political reliability with the unreliable routinely tortured, starved to death and sometimes even buried alive. If Wittgenstein was offered various senior Soviet academic appointments in the mid-thirties - as he undeniably was - then he was considered politically reliable by Marxist professorial apparatchiks such as Janovskaya whose lives and families would have been forfeit had they made a wrong political assessment. Far from there being "not a shred of evidence" that Wittgenstein was working for the Comintern at Cambridge, the offer of the Philosophy Chair is conclusive all by itself. Philosophy is not an ideologically neutral subject and in Stalin's Russia, no one - least of all the son of Central Europe's richest robber-baron capitalist - would be offered high Soviet academic posts if their beliefs were in any way contrary to the Stalin line. Wittgenstein's own students (Jackson and Gasking who later held professorial chairs) stated that Wittgenstein was a Stalinist. Monk records this, but they stated the same to me personally at greater length and detail in private interviews referred to in "The Jew of Linz"). Wittgenstein is on record as stating to Hutt that "at heart" he was a communist and in the Investigations that his most consequential ideas were derived from Sraffa, who was a Cambridge mole for Stalin. All in all, the image of Wittgenstein as a pure-hearted political naif, drawn to Russia by Tolstoy but ignorant of Stalin's mass murder is completely and utterly wrong. To fight Hitler, he sold his soul to Stalin. THAT is what devotees of the Wittgenstein cult have set their faces against as unbearable heresy. But perhaps a cult devotee might be able to offer an alternative explanation of the Soviet offers? Over to our objector ...Kimberley Cornish 07:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Fine, well, and good. Provide the appropriate citations and include it in the article. Banno 07:59, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

It seems people are very ready to put two and two together to make five, yet in fact we don't even have the capacity to make three. Still no real answer to my question. As Hodges's account specifically mentions the summer of 1937, whether or not he was in Cambridge at the beginning and/or end of that year is immaterial. I suspect that on this one, Hodges has been misled by unreliable memories. Itsmejudith 07:20, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Fania Pascal wrote of Wittgenstein ("Recollections of Wittgenstein", p.30)"...I don't think my other assumption is wrong, namely that he first returned from Norway in the summer of 1937." For what it is worth, I also add a quote from an some correspondence following an article on Turing in the August 1999 "Scientific American" by Copeland and Proudfoot. They replied to a letter: "we wish we could explain Turing's death, but having examined the depositions made at the inquest as well as other material, we are less certain than Bushnell that the coroner's verdict of suicide was correct." I shall remark that there are a number of actuarially too early deaths amongst Wittgenstein's acquaintances. Itsmejudith thinks there isn't sufficient evidence yet to show what two and two add up to. I prefer to think of the little boy pointing out that the king whose fine clothes were universally praised by the crowd, was in fact stark naked.Kimberley Cornish 09:29, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is neither a forum nor a place to publish your own research. Banno 10:14, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

More explicitly, the criteria for original research are found at Wikipedia:No original research. My comment is based on the position found in Wikipedia:No original research#Synthesis of published material serving to advance a position. You might consider this discussion closely before you attempt to place your material in the article. See if you can find a source that actually explicitly supports your case. Certainly there is no place for innuendo on the Wiki. Banno 12:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia criteria referenced above use the word "unpublished". "The Jew of Linz" was published by Random House in 1998, reviewed in reputable journals including the TLS and its thesis concerning Wittgenstein and the Russian recruitment publicly supported by well known British academic philosophers such as Antony Flew. (See the Wikipedia article "The Jew of Linz"). It is now a standard, albeit controversial, strand in the various Wittgenstein interpretations and mentioned in most bibliographies of Wittgenstein-related material. It would be quite extraordinary to seek to prevent its central thesis being offered to readers of Wikipedia on POV grounds. Given that the Russian government even as recently as last November sends assassins to murder people on British soil, as the Litvinenko case demonstrates, it cannot be a POV matter to refer questioningly to Soviet offers of high academic positions to Wittgenstein and the early death of his students (such as Turing) and the recruitment of his fellow-Apostles at Trinity College.Kimberley Cornish 20:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

By all means, lets have mention of the book in the article - as indeed there is. Let's also have links to Cornish's book. But let's take care to mark the issue as controversial. Let's also not push past the text, into unpublished allegations. Can you locate citations in secondary or tertiary sources that assert that Wittgenstein was an assassin? If not, leave it out. Banno 21:26, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Since Turing died after Wittgenstein, I was not asserting that Wittgenstein personally murdered him; only that reputable writers suspect that Turing's death was not a suicide. But I think the following points are quite certain: 1. The Soviet offers establish that Wittgenstein was working for the Soviets. 2. An unsusual number of Wittgenstein's associates, including Frank Ramsay, George Paul, Francis Skinner, John Cornford, Julian Bell, to name a few, died premature deaths. 3. Soviet intelligence routinely sent assassins to murder people, just as its descendant agencies do to this very day. 4. Nothing was more in the interest of Soviet intelligence than keeping secret the penetration of British intelligence agencies by Wittgenstein's students, friends and fellow-Apostles.Kimberley Cornish 05:27, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Cool. Perhaps you might set out in the article what it is you are claiming, with appropriate citations? Your own published work included, of course. Banno 22:50, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

That an agent-in-place might be risked by being ordered to commit assassinations is an hypothesis likely to be dismissed on prudential grounds; the Soviets instead trained specialist murderers to do the job. These, however, had to act on information received and digested in Moscow from agents-in-place. We therefore ought to reflect on point 1, above. 210.49.121.35 22:43, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Kimberley Cornish 05:27, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Another reference for Itsmejudith, from Rush Rhees' "Postcript" in "Recollections of Wittgenstein", p.209: "I saw him again in Cambridge in June or July 1937."Kimberley Cornish 05:42, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

"village Skjolden at the bottom of the Sognefjord"

What on earth is this meant to mean? My geography teacher would have had a fit. I presume we are not talking about an underwater village. Are we talking about the southernmost point ? the lowest point of the valley above the level of the fjord or what ?--Pedantic of Purley 21:27, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

W and Hitler Photo

Moved to Talk:Ludwig_Wittgenstein/SemitismAndHitler Lycurgus 08:24, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Date of W + Hitler photograph

Moved to Talk:Ludwig_Wittgenstein/SemitismAndHitler Lycurgus 08:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Major Issue with later work

In the article there is nothing said about the problem with the philosophical investigations and the understanding of the later works structure which is crucial for understanding. The current editor of the Nachlass "On his death, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) left behind a philosophical Nachlass of some 20,000 pages", http://www.inst.at/trans/10Nr/pichler10.htm. The style of writing is so important that it should be considered as a new form of philosophical inquiry.

Bygosh and bygolly, the bloke never got off a completed or coherent work after the Tractatus and here we are launching into Wittgenstein Studies! Lycurgus 21:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

And there are good reasons for that which lie directly in the work itself. The main topic of the later work has to do with coherence of thought manifested by the texts themselves and the process of production. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.177.151.212 (talk) 11:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Uh...I do not think that is the main topic of the later work; that should be plainly obvious. Perhaps there should be a comment about the style of the work, and the reason for it (Wittgenstein explains this in the preface) but I simply do not see the "major issue" that you do. Enigma00 15:06, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

There is no preface and there is no published work. Any account that suggests that the philosophical investigations are a publication of L.W. is just simply false. If you want to dispute my point you better bring some arguments. 'I don't see the point' is not an argument. If somebody works for 20 years and doesn't publish a single page there must be quite obviously a serious reason. This is even more true for a person who, at the beginning of this work was arguably most widely regarded as the most important philosopher of the time. So either L.W. didn't have any interest in the reception of his work at all or just didn't manage to publish.

Actually Part I of the Investigations WAS in its final form, and it was Part II that was added on by the editors (maybe because the material that it contains would have been edited down and included in Part I had he gotten around to it? I don't know). The preface (as far as I know) was written to correspond with the manuscript of Part I, which he decided not to publish, for reasons that I'm not clear on right now. You are clearly being irrational and neglectful of the facts. Enigma00 06:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Just want to be clear I didn't make the comment above. No idea who did but log should indicate something. Lycurgus 16:14, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

So I am being "clear irrational" when you first don't bother to bring an argument and second don't give any sources. It seems that you know little about the situation, but attack my points for no clear reason without bothering to consider my arguments. 1. The preface was never written for a work called PI. 2. Any part can not have been it its final form, but the closest piece of work close to publication was the Big Typescript. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.56.59.1 (talk) 19:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I notice that you fault me for not giving sources yet you give none of your own. Please enlighten me (with sources) as to how the PI is not really a true work of W's and how we've all gone astray. Enigma00 04:42, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I've not given sources? That is an easy thing to check. Right up there I gave a source which presents the situation in detail. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.56.59.1 (talk) 22:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

But it doesn't tell me WHY I ought not to consider PI Part I a work of Wittgenstein's, or at least, if it does, I can't see it. Enigma00 17:05, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

This leads nowhere. Why even bother? Inform yourself and make some arguments if you want to have a debate.

Areas of Interest

Currently the areas of interest are listed as: "Metaphysics, Epistemology, Logic, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mathematics". Given Wittgenstein's voluminous remarks on psychology and psychological concepts, should we not include Philosophy of Mind or Philosophy of Psychology? I know that Phil of Mind can sometimes be subsumed under 'Metaphysics' (though this is perhaps up for debate), but I think we should make a distinction here. Opinions? Enigma00 02:19, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann ...

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen" ("Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.95.236.142 (talk) 20:26, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann ..." translation

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen" ("Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent").

The german muss, as far as I know, does /not/ mean 'must', but rather means 'should'.

Hence the correct translation is: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should be silent.
Personally I think this is an important nuance that is lost in 'thereof one must be silent'.

bjd

Well, that's from the Ogden translation, which I believe was assisted by Frank Ramsey and commented on by W. himself. The Pears and McGuiness translation also uses "must" (though they render the whole phrase different; "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."). Given both of these facts, plus three on-line translation sources (Dictionary.com, Babelfish, and The Maschler German-English Online Dictionary) giving me the meaning of "must", I think you may be wrong on this one.Enigma00 06:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Photograph

Anyone know where the photograph of W. went? I'm assuming that it got turfed because of a copyright issue, but I don't see anything in the page history.

The next thing I wonder about is if there even ARE any photographs of Wittgenstein that are fair-use. I know certain websites have gotten into trouble over using certain photos, so I'm not sure what we should do.

Anyone? Enigma00 05:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks to me like it was removed by mistake; I have readded it. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 16:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks! Enigma00 (talk) 04:44, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Once again folks, we are out of a photograph. Can this be fixed? It seems the problem had to do with copyright, but it seems to me the only issue was because the person who uploaded the photo did not give a fair-use rationale. If we do this we should be okay to use the one we had. If I am wrong, someone please correct me. Enigma00 (talk) 05:52, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess I could temporarily restore it for the purpose of adding a FUR, then editors could list it at IfD if they contest it. Alternatively, we could take it to DRV and discuss the merits of a (hypothetical) FUR there. It would have been nice if a message were posted here that a FUR was needed. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Lead

If I read the FAR correctly, the short the lead was one important criticism.

In my not so humble opinion, the info box is too long, and infoboxes on biographies are an abomination anyway. Why not get rid of the infobox and add the information not yet covered as prose to the lead?

--Pjacobi (talk) 14:59, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd oppose getting rid of the infobox completely, but I agree that it's gotten too long. It's certainly true that Wittgenstein had many a number of notable influences and influenced many notable people, but I think shorter lists in those areas would be more useful. I think "notable ideas" could be more clear and succinct, and perhaps we should get rid of the "early/later" business -- I think there is some contrast, but I don't think it's that important. There are also some minor redundancies in the Interests field. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:18, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, the infoboxes are on every single philosopher page, so I'm not sure we can just decide to get rid of the one of W.'s page without rocking the boat a bit. But I'm in agreement that it should be gone. I can definitely make shorter the "influenced" field, as many of those listed are far from Wittgensteinian. I don't think we should get rid of the early/later distinction, though. You say you don't think it's that important, but the contrast between his early and later work is large and quite important. But I'll see what I can do. As for the lead, what should be added? Enigma00 (talk) 07:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think to some degree the contrast is significant, as one could say of most philosophers... but there are only ~25 words to work with, so we really have to give up comprehensiveness. Glad you're willing to trim some of the "influenced" items. I was thinking we could at least get rid of neopragmatism/Rorty and Dennet? Not sure about Davidson? And quietism I'm unfamiliar with.... — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 10:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

You might be right; though I am sceptical of the possibility of trimming down the 'notable ideas' to one or two that apply to both periods. Actually I think we might want to include only his later notable ideas. But really, I think the problem is with the existence of the infobox. As for trimming the 'influenced' field, Dennett and Davidson can go, as can quietism and neopragmatism. I'm not sure about Rorty - some of his work did have a Wittgensteinian flair. And Kripke is debatable. He did write a book prompted by W.'s thought, but it is widely thought to be a huge misinterpretation of W.'s remarks, and the references he makes to W. in 'Naming and Necessity' are either to criticize or are used as jumping off points for discussion. Given those facts, and that Kripke is in no sense a 'Wittgensteinian' philosopher, I propose removing him too. The problem is really what constitutes 'influence'; people like Descartes, Kant, Hume, Wittgenstein, etc, can be said to influence almost any philosopher you choose because their impact was so huge. In a sense they impacted analytic philosophy as a whole, and in W.'s case the Vienna circle and positivism as well as 'ordinary language philosophy'. This is why if we must keep the 'influenced' field, I propose that for W. we restrict it to the three above-mentioned schools, plus all those major philosophers who were either his students (Anscombe, Rhees, Malcolm, etc) or can be described as 'Wittgensteinian' (Hacker, etc). Enigma00 (talk) 19:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. I see your point with regard to the ambiguity. I trimmed the clear candidates off the list, but feel free to continue the job as you see fit -- I think you know better than me, at least with regard to Rorty/Kripke. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 23:39, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I removed Kripke, given my last comments, and Ayer, and included instead Logical Positivism. I also added Rush Rhees and D.Z. Phillips. I realize that these additions make the section as long as it was before, but this time at least I feel it is ACCURATE. We can probably lose a couple if we have to, but let me know what you think. Additionally, I removed Spinoza from the Influences field, because apart from being the inspiration for G.E. Moore's suggested title for the English version of the Tractatus, I can't see how he might have influenced W. And finally, I changed the Notable Ideas field by removing the reference to early and later, the text we had under 'early', and putting instead something about his general conception of philosophy, viz. that its 'problems' arise due to misuse of language. This applied to both eras of his work. However I have also kept the references to "meaning as use" and the private language argument, as they are, I think, his most-cited major ideas. Obviously I'm open to revising all I've changed. Enigma00 (talk) 03:06, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

PS: I had second thoughts about Rorty; he's gone now too. Enigma00 (talk) 03:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks good; nice work. I think it's a reasonable size now. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Er, no. Sorry, but I suggest you read the lead section guidelines (what seems worse is that it appears to have been shorter while an FA. People just don't get lead sections...) Richard001 (talk) 09:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Picture

We lost the picture? Can someone upload it again (or get it undeleted) and add a fair use rationale this time? We obviously can't take a fresh one of him so it will have to be either fair use or PD. Richard001 (talk) 02:27, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The location was . I suppose you can ask for undeletion from the admin or upload another non-free image. –Pomte 02:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)