philosophy

[Raymonds009]

I agree with the comments made by the many readers of this book. What I find most fascinating is simply the way W's mind worked. As soon as he thought out a complex problem he realized that the solution either negated his point or made it superfluous and he had to start all over again. For academics this is a problem, especially with publishing. If you find that everything in what you have just published needs to be revised you exhaust those around you--as he did. He could not stop himself.
Did this mean that his thinking was too advanced-- or too solipsistic to understand? This is what I am grappling with right now.

[Pablo]

Yeah, he wrote the Tractatus, published it and then said it was wrong! You just have to love it! Well, what he actually said was that the book was like a clock that gave you the wrong time. I still think it's a very profound book.

[Joseph]

I read at least 2 of Wittgenstein's books, but I got the impression that what is referred to as "the later Wittgenstein" was a time in his life when he renounced the worldview such that there's an objectively existing world that we can describe (somewhat) linguistically, but that now he came to think that reality is more-or-less an illusion. The Tractatus did a better job of describing reality than did his later (liberalized, relativized) views of reality. So I think.

[Michael]

Wittgenstein's earlier thought was based on the assumption that the world is a totality of facts and was an expression of the spirit of the time which would later manifest itself in the logical positivist movement which Wittgenstein continually rebuked for this assumption and for not knowing what Philosophy is. On one occasion he was invited to one of their meetings and read poetry to them as a demonstration of the scope of Philosophy. I was studying Philosophy in England when his later work was creating a minor revolution in the world of Education. My recently published book "The World Explored, the World suffered: The Exeter Lectures" is written in the spirit of that revolution which thankfully contributed to the collapse of the assumption of the world is the totality of facts and brought the philosophy of Aristotle and Kant back into focus after their temporary eclipse by a scientific view of philosophy.