Ludwig Wittgenstein.docx

1、Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein (Redirected from Wittgenstein)Ludwig WittgensteinWestern Philosophy20th century philosophyFull nameLudwig Josef Johann WittgensteinBirth26 April 1889Vienna, Austria-HungaryDeath29 April 1951 (aged 62)Cambridge, United KingdomSchool/traditionAnalytic philosophy,

2、 Post-Analytic PhilosophyMain interestsLogic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mathematics, Philosophy of mind, EpistemologyNotable ideasMeaning is use, private language argument, conceptual therapy.Influenced byshowInfluencedshowLudwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (pronounced lutv jo

3、zf johan vtgntan) (26 April 1889 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.1 As one of the twentieth centurys most important philosophers, his influence has been wide-ranging.Before

4、his death at the age of 62,2 the only book-length work Wittgenstein had published was the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Philosophical Investigations, which Wittgenstein worked on in his later years, was published shortly after he died. Both of these works are regarded as highly influential in anal

5、ytic philosophy.34Contentshide 1 Life o 1.1 Early lifeo 1.2 World War I 1.2.1 Developing the Tractatuso 1.3 The lost years after the Tractatuso 1.4 Return to Cambridgeo 1.5 Final years 2 Work o 2.1 The Tractatuso 2.2 Intermediate workso 2.3 Philosophical Investigations 3 Criticism 4 Influence o 4.1

6、Trivia 5 Bibliography o 5.1 Works 5.1.1 Works onlineo 5.2 Further readingo 5.3 Works about Wittgenstein 6 See also 7 Notes and references 8 External linksedit LifeLudwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889, to Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein. He was the youngest of eight children, born

7、 into one of the most prominent and wealthy families in the Austro-Hungarian empire. His fathers parents, Hermann Christian and Fanny Wittgenstein, were born into Jewish families but later converted to Protestantism, and after they moved from Saxony to Vienna in the 1850s, assimilated into the Vienn

8、ese Protestant professional classes. Ludwigs father, Karl Wittgenstein, became an industrialist and went on to make a fortune in iron and steel. Ludwigs mother Leopoldine, born Kalmus, was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich von Hayek. Despite Karls Protestantism, and the fact that Leopold

9、ines father was Jewish, the Wittgenstein children were baptized as Roman Catholicsthe faith of their maternal grandmotherand Ludwig was given a Roman Catholic burial upon his death.5edit Early lifeLudwig grew up in a household that provided an exceptionally intense environment for artistic and intel

10、lectual achievement. His parents were both very musical and all their children were artistically and intellectually educated. Karl Wittgenstein was a leading patron of the arts, and the Wittgenstein house hosted many figures of high culture above all, musicians. The family was often visited by music

11、ians such as Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. Ludwigs older brother Paul Wittgenstein went on to become a world-famous concert pianist, even after losing his right arm in World War I. Ludwig himself had absolute pitch,6 and his devotion to music remained vitally important to him throughout his lif

12、e: he made frequent use of musical examples and metaphors in his philosophical writings, and was said to be unusually adept at whistling lengthy and detailed musical passages. He also played the clarinet and is said to have remarked that he approved of this instrument because it took a proper role i

13、n the orchestra.His family also had a history of intense self-criticism, to the point of depression and suicidal tendencies. Three of his four brothers committed suicide. The eldest of the brothers, Hans an early musician who started composing at age four killed himself in April 1902, in Havana, Cub

14、a. The third son, Rudolf, followed in May 1904 in Berlin. Their brother Kurt shot himself at the end of World War I, in October 1918, when the Austrian troops he was commanding deserted en masse.7Until 1903, Ludwig was educated at home; after that, he began three years of schooling at the Realschule

15、 in Linz, a school emphasizing technical topics. For one school year Adolf Hitler was a student there at the same time but two grades below Wittgenstein, when both boys were 14 or 15 years old.8 It is a matter of controversy whether Hitler and Wittgenstein knew each other personally, and if so wheth

16、er either had any memory of the other.Wittgenstein spoke an unusually pure high German, albeit with a slight stutter, wore very elegant clothes, and was highly sensitive and extremely unsociable. It was one of his idiosyncrasies to use the formal form of address with his classmates and to demand tha

17、t they too with the exception of a single acquaintance address him formally, with Sie and Herr Ludwig.9Ludwig was interested in physics and wanted to study with Ludwig Boltzmann, whose collection of popular writings, including an inspiring essay about the hero and genius who would solve the problem

18、of heavier-than-air flight (On Aeronautics) was published during this time (1905).10 However, Boltzmann committed suicide in 1906.11In 1906, Wittgenstein began studying mechanical engineering in Berlin, and in 1908 he went to the Victoria University of Manchester to study for his doctorate in engine

19、ering, full of plans for aeronautical projects. He registered as a research student in an engineering laboratory, where he conducted research on the behaviour of kites in the upper atmosphere, and worked on the design of a propeller with small jet engines on the end of its blades. During his researc

20、h in Manchester, he became interested in the foundations of mathematics, particularly after reading Alfred N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russells Principia Mathematica12 and Gottlob Freges Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vol. 1 (1893) and vol. 2 (1903).13 In the summer of 1911 Wittgenstein visited Frege an

21、d, after having corresponded with him for some time, was advised by Frege to attend the University of Cambridge to study under Russell.14In October 1911 Wittgenstein arrived unannounced at Russells rooms in Trinity College and was soon attending his lectures and discussing philosophy with him at gre

22、at length. He made a great impression on Russell and G. E. Moore and started to work on the foundations of logic and mathematical logic.Russell was increasingly tired of philosophy and saw Wittgenstein as a successor who would carry on his work.15 During this period Wittgensteins other major interes

23、ts were music and travelling (he went to Iceland, in September 1912), often in the company of David Pinsent, an undergraduate who became a firm friend. He was also invited to join the Cambridge Apostles, an elite secret society which Russell and Moore had both belonged to as students. Whilst in Camb

24、ridge Wittgenstein often liked to go to the cinema.16In 1913 Wittgenstein inherited a large fortune when his father died.17 He donated some of it, initially anonymously, to Austrian artists and writers, including Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl. In 1914 he went to visit Trakl when the latter want

25、ed to meet his benefactor, but Trakl died (an apparent suicide) days before Wittgenstein arrived.Although he was invigorated by his study in Cambridge and his conversations with Russell, Wittgenstein came to feel that he could not get to the heart of his most fundamental questions while surrounded b

26、y other academics. In 1913 he retreated to the relative solitude of the remote village of Skjolden at the end of the Sognefjord in Norway.14 Here he rented the second floor of a house and stayed for the winter. The isolation from academia allowed him to devote himself entirely to his work, and he la

27、ter saw this period as one of the most passionate and productive times of his life. While there he wrote a book entitled Logik, a ground-breaking work in the foundations of logic which was the immediate predecessor and source of much of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.edit World War I1914 notesTh

28、e outbreak of World War I in the next year took him completely by surprise, as he was living a secluded life at the time. He volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian army, first serving on a ship and then in an artillery workshop. In 1916 he was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian fro

29、nt, where he won several medals for bravery, then in the Italian southern Tyrol (today Trentino, in Italy), where he was taken as a prisoner of war by the Italian army in November 1918 near Trento14His notebook entries during the war reflect his contempt for the baseness, as he saw it, of his fellow

30、 soldiers. Throughout the war, Wittgenstein kept notebooks in which he frequently wrote philosophical and religious reflections alongside personal remarks. The notebooks reflect a profound change in his religious life: a militant atheist during his stint at Cambridge, Wittgenstein discovered Leo Tol

31、stoys The Gospel in Brief at a bookshop in Galicia. He devoured Tolstoys commentary and became an evangelist of sorts; he carried the book everywhere he went and recommended it to anyone in distress (to the point that he became known to his fellow soldiers as the man with the gospels). 18 Monk notes

32、 that at the end of his life, Wittgenstein still firmly believed in the Resurrection of Jesus. 18 Wittgensteins other religious influences include Saint Augustine, Fyodor Dostoevsky and, most notably, Sren Kierkegaard, whom Wittgenstein referred to as a saint.19edit Developing the TractatusHochreit 1920. Wittgenstein is seated between his sister Helene Salzer and his friend, Arvid Sjgren.Wittgensteins work on Logik began to tak