Philosophy Friday: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein: 1889-1951

            Ludwig Wittgenstein studied under Bertrand Russell, who considered him to be a genius and a bit eccentric. Originally studying engineering, he transferred from The University of Manchester, after reading the work of Bertrand Russell, to Cambridge University to study under him. Wittgenstein was raised in a religious home, his father being a Protestant Jew and his mother being a Roman Catholic. Wittgenstein studied the relationship between language and the world. [1]    

            Wittgenstein’s first book, Tractatus, is filled with confident sayings regarding the nature of logic. Wittgenstein seems very certain of his philosophy, though he would alter it significantly in his later work. The Tractatus defends scientific rationality and logical positivism. He harkens to Russell’s minimalistic ideas regarding simple sentences that “picture” simple facts. He argues that language is a collection of pictures that represent reality. Wittgenstein goes on to discuss the boundaries of reason. He answers the question, “What can’t reason do?” His answer is that reason cannot understand itself. One cannot know the nature of reason through reason. Also, Wittgenstein asserts that there are things that are “unsayable,” unknowable, and outside of the abilities of scientific rationality. These things are things are like ethics, God, and religion.^[2]

            Logical positivism would arise out of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, but unlike Wittgenstein, the logical positivists  assert that the “unsayable” things are meaningless. The logical positivists ignore philosophy of religion, ethics, and aesthetics. The logical positivist’s removal of these important areas of philosophy would not have been approved by Wittgenstein, who viewed these things as above the capacities of the logical language of science.[3]

            Wittgenstein’s second work, Philosophical Investigations, takes an interesting view of philosophy as a whole. The first part of the work is a critique of Wittgenstein’s earlier book, Tractatus, arguing that the traditional view within was too limited. In this part, Wittgenstein argues that the traditional understanding of philosophy is fallacious. In the second part of his work, Wittgenstein presents philosophy as a type of therapy and communication as “language games.”[4]

            Ludwig Wittgenstein’s was an eccentric character with an eccentric understanding of the nature and interaction of language and philosophy in the world. Though he was heavily influenced by the writings of Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein was still an independent philosopher, and he developed many new philosophical perspectives of the world that he lived in.

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[1]. Pojman and Vaughn, “Kudwig Wittgenstein,” in Classics of Philosophy, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1159-1160.

[2]. Solomon and Higgins, “From Modernism to Postmodernism,” A Short History of Philosophy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 258.

[3]. Ibid., 258-259.

[4]. Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar, "Ludwig Wittgenstein", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2011 ed., ed. Edward N. Zalta  (Stanford: The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information, 2013)