Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein

B I O G R A P H Y

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who

worked primarily in the areas of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of

mind, and philosophy of language. Considered by some to be the greatest

philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein played a central and

controversial, role in 20th-century analytic philosophy. He continues to influence

current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception

and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture.

There are two commonly recognized stages of Wittgenstein's thought — the early

and the later. The early Wittgenstein is epitomized in his Tractatus Logic-

Philosophical.

By showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, he

provided new insights into the relations between world, thought and language and

thereby into the nature of philosophy.

In the stage , later Wittgenstein, mostly recognized in the Philosophical

Investigations, who took the more revolutionary step in critical all of traditional

philosophy including its climax in his own early work. The nature of his new

philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive

to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems.

Works of Ludwig Wittgenstein :

WORKS MOST IMPORTANT OF WITTGENSTEIN

Age Work

 1921     

Tractatus Logic-Philosophic us

1953 * Philosophical investigations

1953 * Annotations on the foundations of the mathematical

1958 * Notebooks blue and brown

1961 * Philosophical newspaper 1914-1916

1965 * Philosophical observations

1965 * Readings of Ethics

1966 * Readings and conversations on aesthetics, psychology and religious beliefs

 1969 * About the certainty

The main Book : “The Tractatus”

In a letter to Bertrand Russell from 1919, Wittgenstein says of his Tractatus Logic-

Philosophicus (TLP):

Now I'm afraid you haven't really got hold of my main contention to which the

whole business of logical propositions is only corollary. The main point is the

theory of what can be expressed by propositions, i.e., by language (and, which

comes to the same thing, what can be thought) and what cannot be expressed by

propositions, but only shown; which I believe is the cardinal problem of

philosophy. This corresponds to the Preface where he writes:

The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what

can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass

over in silence.

Those things that cannot be expressed in words make themselves manifest;

Wittgenstein calls them the mystical (6.522). They include everything that is the

traditional subject matter of philosophy, because what can be said is exhausted by

the natural sciences.

Influences: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Influence for > Arthur Schopenhauer - Baruch Spinoza - Bertrand Russell -

Friedrich Nietzsche - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - Immanuel Kant - Johann

Wolfgang Von Goethe - León Tolstoi - San Agustín - Soren Kierkegaard - William

James

Influence to > Friedrich Hayek - Karl Popper - Paul Auster

Both his early and later work have been major influences in the development of

analytic philosophy. Former colleagues and students include Bertrand Russell, G.E.

Moore, Gilbert Ryle, Friedrich Waismann, Norman Malcolm, G. E. M. Anscombe,

Rush Rhees, Georg Henrik von Wright, Peter Geach and the Buddhist scholar K.N.

Jayatilleke.

Contemporary philosophers heavily influenced by him include Richard Rorty,

Michael Dummett, Donald Davidson, P.M.S. Hacker, John R. Searle, Saul Kripke,

John McDowell, David Pears, Hilary Putnam, Anthony Quinton, Peter Strawson,

Paul Horwich, Joseph Owens, Colin McGinn, Daniel Dennett, D. Z. Phillips, Stanley

Cavell, Cora Diamond, James F. Conant, Isaiah Berlin, Iris Murdoch, Anthony Kenny,

Jürgen Habermas and Jean-François Lyotard.

With others, Conant, Diamond and Cavell have been associated with an

interpretation of Wittgenstein sometimes known as the New Wittgenstein. Saul

Kripke has published his own interpretation of Philosophical Investigations in

Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, which came to be dubbed by critics

"Kripkenstein".

Wittgenstein has also had a significant influence in the social sciences. Patrick

Lynch's thinking as an economist was deeply influenced by Wittgenstein's visits to

Ireland and the holidays they spent with friends in the west of the country on the

wind swept shores of the Atlantic. As Ireland emerged from hundreds of years in

the intellectual wilderness, the then Irish Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera had

entrusted Patrick Lynch with developing the relationship between Wittgenstein

and an emerging Irish intellectual set of academics. Psychologists and

psychotherapists inspired by Wittgenstein's work include Fred Newman, Lois

Holzman, Brian J. Mistler, and John Morss. American anthropologist Clifford Geertz

heavily grounded his development of linguistic symbolism in Wittgenstein's work ;

while the influential French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, stated that "Wittgenstein

is probably the philosopher who has helped me most at moments of difficulty. He's

a kind of saviour for times of great intellectual distress"

Wittgenstein's influence has extended beyond what is normally considered

philosophy and may be found in various areas of the arts.

Conclusion

It is fundamental to point out an important difference in the attitude of

Wittgenstein and that of the rest of philosophers that they are included in the

average neopositivist; the characteristic note of this movement was the hostility to

the traditional philosophical speech and the same topics of the philosophy. In the

case of Wittgenstein we find a more similar attitude to the Kantian: the traditional

metaphysics objects exist, but of them it doesn't fit the knowledge: the mystic thing

exists (God), the metaphysical fellow, the moral and aesthetic values but they are

beyond what one can say. Contrary to Kant, Wittgenstein doesn't present a

resource that links us with the metaphysical thing clearly (for Kant it was the

ethics and the reflection on the moral behavior), but in some texts and in particular

conversations Wittgenstein seems to affirm its existence; the metaphysical thing is

shown but it cannot be, of the metaphysical thing alone it fits the silence: “On what

one cannot speak, he should stay silence.” (“Tractatus”, 7)

Recommendations

We can conclude that the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein with all their deficiencies,

it has been important historically because it raised a new interest for the language

and to leave open many questions as the truth, the sense, the relationship between

logic and ontology, etc. Some interpreters have compared their philosophy to the

doctrine Kantian: as well as Kant put a limit to the use of the reason that took him

to eliminate the philosophy like science, transferring it to the plane of the practical

reason, Wittgenstein in this work would put limits to the language transferring the

big metaphysical contents to the environment of the ineffable that is shown. This is

partly true, but be maybe more effective in definitive to consider Wittgenstein in

an own way, starting from that him same he has said, without carrying to an

extreme the comparisons with other authors. He doesn't get lost this way their

characteristic originality and the danger of a false interpretation is avoided.

ARCHE

The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-

called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. Thus people

today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God

and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both were right and both wrong;

though the view of the ancients is clearer insofar as they have an acknowledged

terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were

explained

— Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.371-2

ANNEXES

VOCABULARY

1. Illusion : desire, yearning, security, fee

2. Intellectual: thinker, academic, brain , scholar , rational, logical

3. Logic : reason, judgment, sense ,common sense

4. Metaphysics: basic, esoteric, essential, eternal, fundamental, general, ideal,

intellectual, philosophical, profound, speculative, spiritual, subjective,

universal.

5. Mystical: spiritual, mystic, numinous, magical, supernatural, magic.

6. Phenomena : exceptional, extraordinary, fantastic, marvellous, miraculous,

notable, outstanding, prodigious, remarkable, sensational, singular,

stellar , uncommon, unique, unparalleled, unusual, wondrous  (archaic or

literary)

Glossary

1. Analytic Philosophy: Analytic philosophy (sometimes, analytical

philosophy) is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to

dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century

2. Natural Sciences: In science, the term natural science refers to a

naturalistic approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as

obeying rules or laws of natural origin.

3. Perception: In philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science, perception is

the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory

information. ...

4. Social Sciences: The social sciences are the fields of academic learning

which explore aspects of human society. Social sciences may draw upon

empirical methods and attempt to emulate the standards of conventional

scientific practice. ...

5. Sociologist : a social scientist who studies the institutions and

development of human society.

QUOTES

“Anything is as difficult as not to be deceived. “

Difficult

“A new word is like a fresh seed that hurtles to the land of the discussion.”

Word

“To work in philosophy -like to work in architecture, in many senses - it is

in fact a work on oneself. On the own interpretation. On the own way of

seeing the things -y that that one wait of them –“.

Philosophy

“In philosophy the winner of the career is that that knows how to run more

slowly; or the one that arrives last.”

Philosophy

“The philosophy is a fight against the charm of our intelligence for the

language.”

Philosophy

“The philosopher is not civic of any community of ideas. This is what makes

it be philosopher. “

Philosopher

“It is always good in philosophy to outline a question instead of giving an

answer to a question. Because an answer to a philosophical question easily

can be incorrect; I didn't seize their liquidation by means of another

question. “

Philosophy

“Our life is as a dream. But in the best hours we wake up enough like to

realize that we are dreaming. Most of the time, however, we are deeply

sleeping.”

Our life

“We don't realize the prodigious diversity of daily language games because

the external lining of our language makes that it seems all equally. “

Language

“Although all the possible questions of the science receive answer, they

would not even touch the true problems of the life.”

Science

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world. “

Language

“The sense of the world has to reside outside of him and, besides, outside of

the significant language. “

World

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein, Ludwig Tecnos 2007

Investigaciones Filosoficas Wittgenstein, Ludwig Critica 2008

LINKOGRAPHY

http://www.iep.utm.edu/wittgens/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

http://www.deperu.com/web.php?sitioweb=antropograf.blogspot.com/

2010/04/ludwig-wittgenstein-tractatus-logico.html