Talk:Ludwig Wittgenstein/Archive 1

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It's unfortunate that this biography ignores the content of the Tractatus, but more unfortunately it ignores all of the philisophical work W. did after his return from Austria. If there's no objection I'll try to add this information . -- MarkChristensen

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Please do. Although I would prefer to restrict the biography to a description of his life and treat his work and ideas in separate sections. Probably even a separate section for the Tractatus and for the later Wittgenstein. Or maybe even in separate articles. How much time do you have? :-) -- Jan Hidders

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I have some time, notes and papers, which could be adapted from a Wittgenstein class... I agree that the Tractatus, the Blue and Brown Books, and the Philosophical Investigations could (and should) all have their own entries, but I think no biography of a philosopher should fail to at least provide a gloss of their work, the way it progressed over time, and the effect it had on other philosophers. And of course there should be links to pages on all those subjects... --MarkChristensen

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I agree completely that these things should be discussed on this entry, but the question is if you want to merge them with the biography. Look for example at http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/w/wittgens.htm where they also treat life and ideas separately but on the same page. That is what I would prefer although your approach is used by Britannica at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=79363&tocid=0

The main reason that I would want the separate these things is the dynamic nature of Wikipedia, i.e., if somebody drops by and starts to add more details in the biography will this not bury the discussion of his ideas? Is the article not going to be too long for somebody who wants just a quick overview of his ideas? Or what if the discussion of his ideas is extended? Will that not interrupt the story line of his life too much?

Perhaps a good solution would be to give a (mixed) summary of his ideas and life on the main page, (not much longer than, say, a screen or two) and discuss them separately on subpages more extensively. You could have subpages on "Life", "Tractatus", "Philosophical investigations" et cetera or on subject as is done in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. As soon as these get big enough they could be moved to their own entry.

Anyway, I have to get back to work now and will be very busy the next two weeks, so it's all up to you now. I'm looking forward to your additions. -- Jan Hidders

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I would be opposed to making the pages on Wittgenstein's life and individual works subpages of the Wittgenstein page, although less strongly in this case than in other cases. For one thing, if the contents of the article are ever transferred to the Nupedia Chalkboard, the subpages would have to be de-subpagized.

Definitely, discussion of W's life should be separated from that of his philosophy.

I made a few edits to the article. Note, the British Empiricists were all dead long before Wittgenstein; empiricism in the 20th century is generally referred to as just "empiricism" or (as propounded by the Vienna Circle) "logical empiricism." --LMS

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I don't think that the biography should try to explain his work or ideas in depth, but there's an essential connection between W's ideas and his bio. W. was convinced that he the Tractatus was his final work, and even the last word on the subject of philosophy, and so his return to philosophy results primarily from his growing dissatisfaction with the Tractatus. Moreover, he probably would not have returned to philosophy if nobody was paying attention to what he called his "mistakes."

Certianly we should have pages for his major works, which explain his ideas, and seprate section of the main page which expresses a short summary of his ideas independantly of his bio, but the bio will at least have to make reference to his ideas, even if it doesn't try to explain those ideas. --Mark Christensen

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Somebody added (and then readded when I took it out):

The latter [Gustav Mahler] wrote a symphony designed to be played with only one hand, for a brother of Ludwig's who had lost an arm in war.

Symphonies are not written for the piano, they are written for orchestras. Mahler never wrote anything for Paul Wittgenstein, and if he ever wrote solo piano music at all, it isn't known about. Wittgenstein lost his arm in World War I, and Mahler died in 1911, three years before it broke out. It's wrong. I took it out. Details of who did write for Paul Wittgenstein are to be found in his article. --Camembert

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Apologies. It was Ravel I was thinking of, and I used the word "symphony" carelessly. I readded it accidentally, because I must have been in the middle of working through some other revisions to the page when you changed it; I got the message that the page had been changed while I was working, but I hurriedly just added all my data back in, not assuming somebody had changed the specific details I wrote.

No problem. I'm sure we've all made that mistake (I know I have, anyway). --Camembert

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What is the "misinformation?" LW's Great-grandfather Moses Maier was Jewish, and adopted the surname Witgenstein after Napolean's 1808 decree; his son Hermann (LW's grandpa) took the middle name Christian and converted. Slrubenstein

First and foremost, even if all the controversy about his partial Jewish background is accurate, what is the point of, from all his heritage, only mentioning the Jewish part and nothing else? Secondly, his mother was not Jewish, and by definition per the Jews themselves, you are a Jew if your mother is a Jew. And even if the speculation that his mother's father was 'of Jewish heritage' were to be correct, still she doens't become a Jew by definition. Thirdly, if they were Jews or even part Jews, their family under Nuremberg Laws would have been classified as such, but the Wittgenstein family was not classified as such during the Third Reich. You might also notice the name Hermann Christian Wittgenstein, and probably would agree that Christian would be indeed a strange middle name for a Jew to give to his son.

Nevertheless, the main point is that even if he did have some Jewish heritage, it certainly wasn't his only heritage, and to single out his "Jewishness" is nothing short of racism.   --Keyvan 21:05 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

K1, don't change horses midstream. The article nowhere claims that LW was Jewish or partially Jewish; it claims that his great-grandparents were. You deleted that, calling it misinformation. But it is not misinformation, it is true. Do not delete facts. Do you now accept their accuracy? Inter alia, the fact that many European Jews converted to Christianity in the 19th century in order to join the rising bourgoise is an important aspect of European history. And as for being fair to his "non-Jewish heritage," are you kidding? The article has one or two sentences about his Jewish ancestors. Therefore, the vast remaining part of the article focuses on non-Jewish stuff, including his non-Jewish intellectual and cultural heritage. Slrubenstein

Yes, the article mentions his great-grandparents were Jewish who converted to Christianity. It also leaves out his other great-grandparents. Do you know how many great-grandparents a person has? The article, in the first paragraph of his biography, clearly establishes him as a Jew in the mind of the reader, and then moves on to talk about him. Anyway, I really don't want to beat this subject to death. One thing is for sure, he was a product of the German and English cultures and not the Jewish culture.    --Keyvan 02:54 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

Ludwig's Jewish heritage is important because Ludwig himself thought it was important and thought and wrote about it. Moreover, in the Vienna that little Ludwig grew up in his family was thought of as in some sense Jewish and in those days that played a more important role in that city than you and I would probably like. -- Jan Hidders 21:47 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

His "Jewishness" is not any more important than his "Gentileness"; not to mention the fact that even if the claims about his Jewishness are true, still it would be a smaller percentage than his gentileness. This is racism and if you want to stand up for racism, have the courage to say so instead of offering meaningless excuses. This is really getting to become an annoying theme in too many places now.    --Keyvan 22:21 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

[Begin note by K. Cornish, inserted December 1st, 2003] Wittgenstein had three Jewish grandparents and the fourth, Maria Stallner from Cilli (or Cilje) in what is now Slovenia, though officially Catholic, also had Jewish antecedents. Wittgenstein, then, was halachically Jewish. That is, he had NO gentile roots at all and was as Jewish as is Ariel Sharon under Jewish religious law. As to the accusation of racism, Wittgenstein is reported by Drury as having said that his thought was "100% Hebraic". He also asked his homosexual friend Paul Engelmann (in a letter to him) to take him with him to what was then British mandated Palestine when Engelmann (who was also Jewish) went to live there. Wittgenstein "confessed" to his Cambridge colleagues that he was Jewish and quite indisputably saw himself as Jewish. Given that Wittgenstein was demonstrably the object of Hitler's very first recorded anti-Semitic epithet, any loss of focus on Wittgenstein's Jewishness just muddies the waters of twentieth century history and the origins of the Holocaust. The best short demonstration that Wittgenstein was the object of Hitler's first recorded anti-Semitic jibe, by the way, occurs in a thread on http://classicals.com/music/RichardWagner(1813-1883)hall/cas/175.html though the same argument, minus the names of the Realschule Jewish students, is provided in the book "The Jew of Linz". The references for the Drury quote and the relevent letter to Paul Engelmann are also provided in "The Jew of Linz". (Random House, London 1998). Finally, surviving members of the Wittgenstein family have recently filed suit against the Austrian government for Nazi era losses in which they explicitly state they are Jewish. [End note by K. Cornish]

Keyvan, you have chosen a most peculiar hobby-horse to ride. The Nazi government was able to extort a large fee in exchange for granting the Wittgenstein family a special mischling (half-breed) status, allowing those of them who chose to do so to remain in Vienna exempt from the Nuremberg Laws. (The Wittgenstein fortune had been safely transferred to Switzerland: this was the Nazi's way of getting at it. The arrangement was formalized on August 20, 1939). Had Ludwig lived at a different time, and in a different place, his "Jewishness" might have been no more important than his "Gentileness", but he didn't, and it is. -- Someone else 23:05 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Agreed. He thought of himself in terms of it; that makes it important. He once confessed to someone (Moore?) that he felt guilty about having consciously passed himself as less Jewish than he really was.

There's no reason to construe it as a particularly racial issue, inasmuch as "Jewish" also denotes both a religion and a culture which happen to strongly associate themselves with one's parentage. Finally, being Jewish by whatever definition is hardly irrelevant to a German-speaker living in the thirties.

Still, to avoid over-emphasis of a side issue and in the interests of space, the two references in the first paragraph might reasonably be trimmed to one.

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I was intrigued to see that one author, (Kimberley Cornish, A Jew Of Linz) in a decidedly minority viewpoint, thought that Ludwig Wittgenstein (who attended the Realschule in Linz simultaneously with Hitler) might have "sparked" Hitler's anti-Semitism by tattling on him. Apparently the book goes on to even more bizarre conclusions, but it is somehow also bizarre to think of Wittgenstein and Hitler meeting at school.. -- Someone else 23:19 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Cornish's claims are looked on with a great deal of skepticism by Wittgenstein and Hitler scholars alike. It's an interesting thought (like the claim that Wittgenstein was secretly a military recruiter at Cambridge), but not well backed-up.

Well, yes, that's sort of what I meant by "bizarre"<G> -- Someone else 01:25 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)~

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This is trivial, but I'm *almost* certain that the photo currently showing of Wittgenstein is backward: that is, that he should be looking to his left, our right. I've seen it quite frequently elsewhere (it is, for example, on the cover of several of his books), always the other way 'round. I don't know how to go about fixing this case, though.

Where does the photo come from? Is it in the public domain? AxelBoldt 23:15 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I don't know the source and copyright, but probably this was taken long enough ago to be effectively free. How can we check?

Turning it round was easy - his shirt buttons on the correct side now too! Chris Jefferies 01 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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I think the article on Wittgenstein, particularly the section on the Tractatus, could be improved by a reading of Janik and Toulmin's book Wittgenstein's Vienna.

In it, essentially, they convincingly argue that you cannot understand Wittgenstein's philosophy without understanding his life. He was deeply influenced, way before Russel and Frege, by Viennese culture, especially by figures such as Karl Kraus (whose paper, Die Fackel, Wittgenstein subscribed to during his post-Tractatus isolation) and Adolf Loos (who was a friend of Wittgenstein, and whose architecture was a clear influence on the house that Wittgenstein designed). It is also worth noting that, in Wittgenstein's opinion, the most important philosopher of the nineteenth century--was Kierkegaard.

The grave misunderstandings of the Tractatus that Wittgenstein asserted the positivists were guilty of, were essentially that they failed to see that the Tractatus was (as Wittgenstein himself said) an ethical work. It sought to define the limits of what could be said; the most important things in life (the higher things, such as aesthetics and ethics) could not be addressed with logical, philosophical language, but were rather the realm of art. The Tractatus was an ethical work insofar as, by not addressing ethics, it sought to show that any philosophy of ethics only confused and muddled the sitution.

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Ludwig Wittgenstein/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

needs inline citations and lead should conform to WP:LEAD --plange 20:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC) Rating B: the article borders on hagiographyBernardL 02:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 02:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 20:51, 3 May 2016 (UTC)