This article, I submit, is the Time Magazine definition of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Read at your own peril.
(Peter Hacker is the only academic I know who really seems to get Wittgenstein. You're probably best off ignoring the secondary sources on Wittgenstein altogether, but if you must, I recommend you read Hacker---please not Daniel Dennet.)
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/06/09040...
Sadly most of philosophy is unknown outside those walls. Ludwig may not have found that so sad - he saw philosophy as a kind of mental disability, and himself as the doctor.
Probably the best introduction to Wittgenstein is Janik and Toulmin's "Wittgenstein's Vienna". Even if one decides that philosophy is a fly in a bottle, there's fascinating stuff in that book on forgotten greats like Karl Kraus.
http://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Flies-Kite-Story-Models/d...
To my mind, though, Wittgenstein did, in fact, succeeded in shooting down philosophy as we knew it. He did so by demonstrating with his own unique story and bizarre writing that (if to paraphrase Clemenceau) philosophy is far too important to be left to the philosophers. Wittgenstein's generation was the first one in which Philosophy as an academic and literary endeavour has contributed virtually nothing to our understanding of the world.
The German philosophers before Wittgenstein (Hegel especially) created a philosophical atmosphere in which it was acceptable to create large metaphysical constructions such as the proletarian state or the third Reich. Popper among the other liberal thinkers devoted significant part of their academic work to show that communism and fascism were founded on metaphysical constructions that could not deliver the dream they promised.
I think I remember this refrain from a history textbook somewhere, perhaps. Maybe it is a common view, but I have never seen it supported. To begin with, it would be necessary to show precisely what previous philosophy had done to contribute to "understanding of our world". That very phrase, which is being wielded so causally to criticize analytic philosophy, is precisely the sort of idea that analytic philosophy would handle much more carefully...
To my mind, Wittgenstein's work is actually incredibly helpful, because it helps clear up deep linguistic confusions... confusions that have inhibited real progress in philosophy.
Why should anyone bother to continue reading your comment after that poisoning of the well?
I think if you were to genuinely throw away the last 100 years of philosophy, you would not find yourself in an intellectually better place.
It looks awful and finding stuff is virtually impossible. How wide exactly is that text column where I am supposed to read from ? 300px ?
<shudder>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
> His severe disciplinary methods (often involving corporal punishment, not unusual at the time)—as well as a general suspicion amongst the villagers that he was somewhat mad—led to a long series of bitter disagreements with some of his students' parents, and eventually culminated in April 1926 in the collapse of an eleven-year-old boy whom Wittgenstein had struck on the head.[29] The boy's father attempted to have Wittgenstein arrested, and despite being cleared of misconduct, he resigned his position and returned to Vienna, feeling that he had failed as a school teacher.
But Wittgenstein was a much worse philosopher. He wrote, for example, confusing/obscure attacks on the value of philosophy itself. Not having any philosophical problems one is interested in or finds fruitful is completely understandable. And of course a person in that situation won't make any useful contributions to solving philosophical problems. The weird thing is why he's considered a philosopher, let alone a good one, by anyone.
That old bugbear - horrible as he might have been in person, his philosophy is distinct from this side of him. We might as well insinuate that Feynmann's work is worthless because he was a womanizer.
> Not having any philosophical problems one is interested in or finds fruitful is completely understandable
How is reasoning about the problems of philosophy itself not an interesting philosophical problem? You are entitled to your own opinion, but when you slate someone who was considered by other big philosophers as a giant, you need to make a stronger point than that.
What sort of stronger point do you want? I have an explanation of what Wittgenstein was (a person without philosophical problems) which accounts for all evidence of Wittgenstein known to me. I think it can account for everything you know about Wittgenstein too, if you think about it.
Did you want me to pick several examples -- which you can then accuse of being cherry picked -- and show how it fits? And I should do this in addition to offering my general explanation, even though you've offered neither an explanation of Witt nor brought up any examples for or against mine?
As to Tractatus, if you want to discuss it more can you give a quote from the book that you consider to have value? Or want to cite a fruitful philosophical problem Wittgenstein did have, to contradict my view?
Ad hominem is not automatically a logical fallacy. I think it's important to note that there was something seriously off about Wittgeinstein's character.
rms - though I see what you're saying, in this case I disagree with the statement because much of Wittgenstein's work concerned logic and I don't feel the negative aspects of his character affected the quality of it.
