Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Life and Works . . Picture Theory . . Fact and Value . . New Methods . . Language Games . . Private Language Bibliography Internet Sources Raised in a prominent Viennese family, Ludwig Wittgenstein studied engineering in Germany and England, but became interested in the foundations of mathematics and pursued philosophical studies with Moore at Cambridge before entering the Austrian army during World War I. The notebooks he kept as a soldier became the basis for his Tractatus, which later earned him a doctorate and exerted a lasting influence on the philosophers of the Vienna circle. After giving away his inherited fortune, working as a village schoolteacher in Austria, and designing his sister's Vienna home, Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge, where he developed a new conception of the philosophical task. His impassioned teaching during this period influenced a new generation of philosophers, who tried to capture it in The Blue and Brown Books (dictated 1933-35). From the late 'thirties, Wittgenstein himself began writing the materials which would be published only after his death. In the cryptic Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) (1922),
the earlier Wittgenstein extended Russell's notion of logical analysis by describing a world composed of facts, pictured by thoughts, which are in turn expressed by the propositions of a logically structured language. On this view, atomic sentences express the basic data of sense experience, while the analytic propositions of logic and mathematics are merely formaltautologies. Anything else is literally nonsense, which Wittgenstein regarded as an attempt to speak about what cannot be said. Metaphysics and ethics, he supposed, transcend the limits of human language. Even the propositions of the Tractatus itself are of merely temporary use, like that of a ladder one can discard after having climbed up it: they serve only as useful reminders of the boundaries of our linguistic ability. This work provided the philosophical principles upon which the logical positivists relied in their development of a narrowly antimetaphysical standpoint. But just as his theories began to transform twentieth-century philosophy,
Wittgenstein himself became convinced that they were mistaken in demanding an excessive precision from human expressions. The work eventually published in the Philosophical Investigations (1953) pursued an different path. In ordinary language, he now supposed, the meaning of words is more loosely aligned with their use in a variety of particular "language games." Direct reference is only one of many ways in which our linguistic activity may function, and the picturing of reality is often incidental to its success. Belief that language can
perfectly capture reality is a kind of bewitchment, Wittgenstein now proposed. Thus, philosophy is properly a therapeutic activity, employed to relieve the puzzlement generated by (philosophical) misuses of ordinary language.
In particular, the philosophical tradition erred in supposing that simple reports of subjective individual experience are primary sources for human knowledge. Efforts to employ a private language as expressions of interior mental states, for example, Wittgenstein argued to be an avoidable mistake that had caused great difficulties in the philosophy of mind. His views on this issue were a significant influence on Ryle and others. In his later work, Wittgenstein applied this method of analysis to philosophical problems related to epistemology, mathematics, and ethics.
Recommended Reading: Primary sources: • •
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Schriften, ed. by Friedrich Waismann (Suhrkamp, 1960- ) Wittgenstein Reader, ed. by Anthony Kenny (Blackwell, 1994) {Order from Amazon.com} • Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-1916, ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe and George H. Von Wright (Chicago, 1984) {Order fromAmazon.com} • Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ed. by D. F. Pears (Routledge, 1981) {Order from Amazon.com} • Ludwig Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books (Harpercollins, 1986) {Order from Amazon.com} • Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr. by G. E. M. Anscombe (Prentice Hall, 1999) {Order from Amazon.com} • Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty / Über Gewissheit, ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe and G .H. Von Wright (Harpercollins, 1986) {Order from Amazon.com} • Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. by Rush Rhees and G. E. M. Anscombe (MIT, 1983) {Order fromAmazon.com} Secondary sources: •
P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein (Routledge, 1999) {Order fromAmazon.com}
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Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr. by G. E. M. Anscombe (Prentice Hall, 1999) {Order from Amazon.com} • Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty / Über Gewissheit, ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe and G .H. Von Wright (Harpercollins, 1986) {Order from Amazon.com} • Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. by Rush Rhees and G. E. M. Anscombe (MIT, 1983) {Order fromAmazon.com} Secondary sources: • • • • • • • • • • • • •
P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein (Routledge, 1999) {Order fromAmazon.com} Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language(Harvard, 1984) {Order from Amazon.com} Marie McGinn, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations (Routledge, 1997) {Order fromAmazon.com} The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. by Hans D. Sluga (Cambridge, 1996) {Order from Amazon.com} Joachim Schulte, Wittgenstein: An Introduction, tr. by John F. Holley and William H. Brenner (SUNY, 1992) {Order from Amazon.com} Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Penguin, 1991) {Order from Amazon.com} Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy. ed. by James C. Klagge (Cambridge, 2001) {Order from Amazon.com} A. C. Grayling, Wittgenstein (Oxford, 1988) {Order from Amazon.com} Ilham Dilman, Wittgenstein's Copernican Revolution: The Question of Linguistic Idealism (Palgrave, 2002) {Order from Amazon.com} Matthew B. Ostrow, Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Dialectical Interpretation (Cambridge, 2002) {Order from Amazon.com} P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies(Oxford, 2001) {Order from Amazon.com} Pasquale Frascolla, Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics(Routledge, 2001) {Order from Amazon.com}; Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts, ed. by Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey (Routledge, 2001) {Order from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line information about Wittgenstein includes: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The outstanding guide (in German) from * Deutsche Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft. Articles in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on: ◦ Wittgenstein by Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar. ◦ private language by Stewart Candlish. Duncan J. Richter's thorough article in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The University of Bergen's The Wittgenstein Archives. The article in the Columbia Encyclopedia at Bartleby.com. The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com. Jean Laberge's article (in French) at Encéphi. Björn Christensson's brief guide to on-line resources. A philosophical biography from Uwe Wiedemann. Robert Sarkissian's summary treatment of Wittgenstein's philosophy. A personal tribute from Screaming Chimp Productions. An article by Tadeusz Zawidzki in The Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind. Andy Blunden's biography of Wittgenstein. A brief biography from Österreich-Lexikon. Discussion of Wittgenstein's mathematical significance from Mathematical MacTutor. The entry at Biography.com.