Status Updates From Wittgenstein by Severin Sch...

In 1929 W wrote that his ethics could be summed up in one sentence: “What is Good is Divine too”. Later in life he gave this characteristic of a religious temperament: “Anyone who is halfway decent will think of himself utterly imperfect, but the religious person thinks himself wretched”. In that sense W was certainly a religious person for most of his life.

When in 1914 the Habsburg foreign minister was warned that war with Russia might provoke revolution, he replied mockingly: “and who is supposed to make that revolution? Perhaps Herr Bronstein from Cafe Central?” He was an elegantly dressed Russian immigrant with Marxist ideas, often seen at a chess-board in his habitual haunt. Later however he has become known in his different capacity under the name Trotsky.