Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most brilliant, paradoxical and charismatic philosophers of the twentieth century. Despite the fact that he was not recognized by his contemporaries and was detached from society, he had a great influence on the formation of modern principles and laws of thinking. Wittgenstein became the forerunner of at least three intellectual philosophical movements - logical positivism, linguistic philosophy and linguistic analysis.

short biography

Austria and Great Britain had a great influence on the life and philosophy of such thinker as Ludwig Wittgenstein. The short biography clearly indicates this. The future philosopher was born in Vienna into one of the most famous and wealthy families of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a famous engineer and tycoon, and his mother was from an ancient Jewish family.

Like his father, Ludwig Wittgenstein began to study engineering, and was particularly interested in the design of flying machines. Over time, this led him to the problem of the philosophical basis of mathematics. Besides this, there were other things that Ludwig Wittgenstein was interested in. His biography indicates that he was interested in music, sculpture, architecture, literature and art. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein went to Cambridge, where he became a student, and later an assistant and friend, of Bertrand Russell.

During the First World War, Wittgenstein volunteered for the front, where he was captured. While in a prisoner of war camp, he practically completed one of his most famous works - the “Logical-Philosophical Treatise” - which had a huge impact on the development of European and world philosophy. After that, he worked as a teacher in an ordinary rural school. Over time, Wittgenstein realizes that his philosophy is largely erroneous and requires improvement, so he returns to Great Britain, where he continues to work on his treatise, while being a professor at Cambridge University.

During World War II, he works as an orderly and also pursues his new direction - the philosophy of language. Wittgenstein died in 1953 from prostate cancer. All of his ideas regarding were published posthumously.

Wittgenstein's early philosophy

In his young years, Ludwig Wittgenstein was actively involved in the activities of the literary-critical avant-garde in Vienna, and was also interested in the ideas of K. Kraus, editor of the Torch magazine, who dealt with the issues of separating the value-based and the factual in art. Wittgenstein was also strongly influenced by the ideas of G. Frege and B. Russell, under whom he worked for a long time. From the first he adopted the idea of ​​a propositional function, true meaning, as well as the semantic difference in meaning and meaning of expressions in language, from the second - a method of analyzing language in a logical way, which includes the search for “atomic” facts, as well as individual elements of the logical description of mathematics.

Wittgenstein's first logical ideas were formulated in his Diaries, where he talks about the possibilities of a new logic and logical syntax. These reflections became the basis for his key work of this period - the Logico-Philosophical Treatise.

"Logical-Philosophical Treatise"

The work was published in 1921, first in German and then in English. The book is written in the form of individual aphorisms that Ludwig Wittgenstein used to interpret his ideas. Quotes are placed next to corresponding numbers, indicating the level of importance of a particular aphorism.

Despite the similarities with the ideas of Russell and Frege, the book was unique in many ways. The treatise raises the question of the possibilities and boundaries of thinking, while the author combines the concepts of thinking and language, and philosophy acts as a unique form of analytical criticism of language. In Wittgenstein's concept, language performs the function of denoting facts, which is possible due to the internal logical structure of language. This doctrine still plays an important role in modern Western intellectual trends.

Wittgenstein's later philosophy

Over time, Ludwig Wittgenstein rethought his positions and abandoned the a priori structure of language. It refers to the variety of words and expressions that are used in natural language. In accordance with this, the word does not act as a mental image of an object; only the use of words in context in accordance with linguistic rules gives the word a certain meaning.

Wittgenstein operates with the concept of language games, where each word receives its meaning only when certain conditions of the game are met. Wittgenstein also points out the need to ask questions correctly. Wittgenstein's later philosophical position is described in his work Philosophical Investigations.

"Philosophical Studies"

The last significant book that Ludwig Wittgenstein worked on. Philosophy is briefly described from the introductory part of the book, where the author indicates that this work needs to be considered in comparison with the “Logical-Philosophical Treatise”.

Unlike the earlier work, the Philosophical Investigations do not have a prophetic style and are divided into two parts. The first part has the following structure:

• The concept of language and its meaning.
• Analysis of epistemological and psychological concepts.
• Analysis of the international aspects of the previously mentioned concepts.

The second part of the book is less structured and has an unfinished feel. Here the author talks about words, their meaning and the functions of philosophy in these matters.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most mysterious philosophers of the twentieth century. Unlike his contemporaries, he not only thought, but also lived in accordance with his views. It was thanks to him that philosophy became the philosophy of language - a science that examines how people see and describe the world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: briefly about the philosopher and philosophy

Ludwig Wittgenstein is considered one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th century. He especially influenced the development of analytical philosophy. Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna, into one of the richest and most influential families in Austria. In 1908 he entered the University of Manchester to study engineering (designing aircraft) and soon became very interested in the work of Gottlob Frege and the philosophy of mathematics.

1911-1913 Wittgenstein, on Frege's advice, spent time at Cambridge, where he was a student and assistant of Bertrand Russell. There Frege and Wittgenstein studied the foundations of logic together. From time to time, Wittgenstein went to Norway, where he could live for up to several months, trying to find a solution to the problems he discussed with Frege. In 1914, when the First World War began, Wittgenstein volunteered to go to the front as part of the Austrian army. In 1917 he was captured and remained in a prisoner of war camp until the end of the war. During this period, Wittgenstein almost completely wrote one of his most significant works, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The book was published in German and English after the war.

By 1920, Wittgenstein had practically ceased to be interested in questions of philosophy, believing that all the main problems were solved in his Tractatus. He renounced his share of the inheritance in favor of his brothers and sisters and over the next nine years tried several different professions in Vienna. In 1929, after conversations with members of the Vienna Circle about the philosophy of mathematics and science, Wittgenstein decided to return to Cambridge and study philosophy. This marked a significant shift in his worldview, and his lectures, dialogues and letters from this period are sometimes called the "middle stage of Wittgenstein's philosophy". It was at this time that he abandoned dogmatic philosophy (which included not only traditional philosophical works, but also ideas expressed in his own book).

In the 1930-1940s. Wittgenstein actively conducts seminars in Cambridge. During this time (a period often called the "late stage of Wittgenstein's philosophy") he produced his most important philosophical works, including the revolutionary idea of ​​​​a shift from formal logic to ordinary language, skepticism about the claims of philosophy, and reflections on mathematics and psychology. Wittgenstein planned to include all these ideas in his second book, entitled Philosophical Investigations, but in 1945, when the final manuscript was ready, he withdrew it from print. The book was published posthumously. Wittgenstein spent the next few years traveling and developing his philosophical theory until his death in 1951.

Early stage of Wittgenstein's philosophy

This stage is reflected in the book “Logical-Philosophical Treatise”. Wittgenstein draws on the work of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege and argues against a universal approach to their logic, in which logic is represented by a general set of laws and is called the foundation on which knowledge is built.

The Logical-Philosophical Treatise includes seven main provisions.

1. The world is everything that takes place.

2. What is the case, what is a fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

3. The logical image of facts is thought.

4. A thought is a meaningful sentence.

5. A sentence is a truth function of elementary sentences. (An elementary sentence is a truth function of itself.)

6. General form of the truth function: [ρ, ξ, N(ξ)].

7. What cannot be spoken about, one should remain silent about.

In fact, Wittgenstein argues that logic has no laws and cannot be represented as a set of laws because it is fundamentally different from other sciences. The very hypothesis about the existence of the laws of logic becomes the result of the assumption that logic is a science. But logic is something completely different. It has form, but no content. By itself, it does not say anything, but it is it that determines the structure and form of all statements.

Next, Wittgenstein reflects on the role of the language system. In his opinion, the language system is suitable only for describing facts. He argues that language is not suitable for reasoning about values, ideas relating to something external, outside the world, that discusses the world as a whole (and therefore, some branches of philosophy, including aesthetics, ethics and metaphysics, It is impossible to study using the language system).

For example, a person’s ethical principles are a consequence of his view of the world and lifestyle. How can this be formulated as a law? Wittgenstein argues that a person's ethical views (and most of philosophy) can only be demonstrated, not expressed in words. He reformulated the purpose of philosophy and stated that it is not a doctrine and therefore cannot be treated dogmatically. According to Wittgenstein, the philosopher must use logical analysis to show where traditional philosophers are wrong (he considers all assumptions to be meaningless), and must correct those who say what cannot be expressed. Wittgenstein even admits that his book has come dangerously close to the point where it will make no sense, like all statements.

Late stage of Wittgenstein's philosophy

The Tractatus argues that philosophy does not tolerate a dogmatic approach, and Wittgenstein recognizes that his work is not without this shortcoming. Therefore, his later works, especially the Philosophical Investigations, are characterized by an almost complete rejection of dogmatism. Thus, Wittgenstein moves away from logic to ordinary language, which, in his opinion, should be the basis for any philosopher. In his book, he examines in detail a new way of relating to language and argues that the goal of philosophy should be therapeutic.

In discussing the meaning of words, Wittgenstein argues that the meaning of a word is determined by its use, and not by some kind of abstract connection between reality and language (this is a significant change from the philosopher's earlier views). The meanings of words are not fixed or limited. They can be vague, variable, but remain useful.

To confirm that the meaning of a word is not fixed and has many uses, Wittgenstein coins the term "language game" and often returns to this idea. At the same time, he does not give an exact definition of this term, as if in order to more clearly show the variability and diversity of the language. However, even in the absence of a clear definition, there are no difficulties in understanding it and using it correctly. Thus, Wittgenstein proves that ordinary language is adequate in itself, and attempts to “dig deeper” lead to nothing but unfounded generalizations.

Much of the book Philosophical Investigations is devoted to the language of psychology. It is tempting to think that the words “thinking,” “intention,” “understanding,” and “meaning” refer to mental processes. Having studied their use, Wittgenstein concluded that these words do not refer to a mental state, but to human behavior.

Wittgenstein realized that language and habits are determined not by laws, but by the use of language in a social context (which the scientist calls “forms of life”). This is how people learn to use language at a fundamental level - in social contexts. That is why they can understand each other. In addition, this explains why any person cannot create his own language to describe internal sensations (after all, there will be no way to determine whether the words are used correctly, and therefore the language will be meaningless).

Wittgenstein discusses the process of interpretation, that is, the difference in perception, through the difference between the concepts of “seeing what” and “seeing how.” As an example, they cite the “duck rabbit” he invented.

“Seeing what” is seeing something as simple and obvious (for example, we see that there is a duck in the picture), and “seeing how” is noticing certain aspects (for example, we can see a rabbit here). When a person sees something as something, a process of interpretation occurs. A person does not interpret what he sees unless he understands that there can be more than one interpretation.

In both early and late stages, Wittgenstein argues against theorizing in philosophy, and his significant shift is from using logic to prove the impossibility of philosophical theories to promoting the therapeutic nature of philosophy.

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The greatest philosopher of our time, Ludwig Wittgenstein, is paradoxical and charismatic. Surprisingly, this man, who was intensely worried about his own detachment from his contemporaries, who always believed that his ideas were misunderstood and distorted, largely contributed to the formation of the principles of modern thinking. Philosophy before him had been building theories of the universe since ancient times. Wittgenstein was one of those thinkers under whose influence this science became primarily the philosophy of language: it explores what and how we can say about the world. In the eyes of most people, philosophy looks like the most abstract thing imaginable. In fact, working with the foundations of our thinking always has enormous consequences; it determines the fate of a culture. Wittgenstein was like the philosophers of Ancient Greece in that he dared to live as a philosopher. In our time, a person for whom philosophy is not a profession, not an entertainment for the mind, not a means for anything, but a natural form of life, amazes the imagination.

Deckchair in a Cambridge atmosphere

Oxford professor John Mabbott, who had never seen Ludwig Wittgenstein before, ran into him in the hall of a philosophical conference. Wittgenstein looked as usual. In his life he never wore the hat and tie required for a professor of philosophy. Deciding that the stranger in shorts and with a backpack was at the wrong door, Mabbott remarked:

I'm afraid philosophers gather here.

“I am afraid of the same thing,” replied Wittgenstein. The idea of ​​philosophy as a profession was disgusting to Wittgenstein. According to him, it is better to read detective stories than the Cambridge philosophical magazine Mind. He himself, of course, did just that. One day, Wittgenstein's friend Maurice O'Con Drury told him about his friend who refused to defend his dissertation because he realized that he would not do anything original in philosophy. Wittgenstein announced that for this Drury's friend should have been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Another time, Ludwig wrote thus: “The beginning of true originality lies in not wanting to be what you are not.” He was delighted with the Bible verse: “What will it profit a man if he conquers the whole world and at the same time loses his soul?”

He advised his students to find better uses for themselves. What's wrong with learning some useful craft? Wittgenstein had no illusions about the fact that any of them were able to perceive his philosophy: “My thoughts are reminiscent of a poster over the ticket office of an English station: “Do you really need to go?” (This was right after World War II.) It’s as if, after reading it, someone would say to themselves: “On second thought, no.” A quiet English youth, mathematician Francis Skinner, having made friends with Wittgenstein, to the unspeakable horror of his parents, became a mechanic. The same Drury, having abandoned philosophy and Cambridge, went to help the unemployed of Newcastle. Young people unwittingly copied Wittgenstein's intonations and gestures. When, in his old age, Wittgenstein attended a lecture in America by his former student Norman Malcolm, he seemed to the students to be “the spitting image of Malcolm.”

Ludwig found the atmosphere of Cambridge stifling. According to him, what saved him personally was that he could “produce his own oxygen.” Wittgenstein's name has been surrounded by many bold speculations. It was said about him that the most essential piece of home furnishings for him was a chaise longue. That he reads his lecture courses, stretched out on the floor and thoughtfully looking at the ceiling. For a long time, Wittgenstein was prevented from leaving the “meaningless job of teaching” (“it’s like dying alive!” he wrote in his hearts, perhaps exaggerating) for a long time by the trivial need to earn a living. When the philosopher finally resigned and moved to Ireland, it was said in Cambridge that he had gone to herd sheep in Turkey.

Wittgenstein's university lectures, held in his apartment, were distinguished by their originality, although, I must admit, not to that extent. Firstly, there were two famous sun loungers. They took turns and served the lecturer instead of the department. The professor did not roll on the floor. In addition, there was a card table, which replaced Wittgenstein’s desk, a chair, a fireproof safe for manuscripts and a large stove, which during lectures played the role of an epithet for slow-thinking listeners (“I might as well crucify myself in front of this stove!”). Stacks of detective magazines were piled in the corner. In the next room, which served as the professor's bedroom, there was a folding bed. Students were expected to bring their own chairs or sit on the floor.

What Wittgenstein called “lecture” did not stem from any curriculum. It consisted in the fact that Wittgenstein began to philosophize publicly and out loud, analyzing the problem that was currently mastering his mind. He simply let strangers into his frantically working brain. “It was one of his manifestations of absolute, boundless honesty,” recalls Malcolm. Of course, in such a “lecture” there was not an ounce of detached professorial artistry, which, in Wittgenstein’s eyes, was just an antics that fooled the students. According to eyewitnesses, his course of reasoning was interrupted from time to time by messages “I’m a fool” and expressions of doubt that this time he would be able to continue.

In fact, classes never ended until the evening, leaving Wittgenstein completely exhausted. As soon as his listeners with their rattling chairs headed for the door, he would imploringly turn to one of them: “Shall we go to the cinema?” On the way to the cinema, he usually bought a raisin bun or a meat pie to eat during the show. Like detective stories, cinema was a violent way for him to turn off his exhausted brain. Therefore, his preferences extended to unpretentious American cinema. In English films he found the weight of tortured intellectualism, perhaps due to prejudice against English culture in general. Living in England, Wittgenstein was not an Anglophile.

Son of a millionaire

Wittgenstein avoided being the center of attention and avoided any contact that he considered undesirable for himself. More than anything else, he hated those who were interested in his private life. When a publisher once asked him to provide biographical information about himself, Ludwig was furious: “Write what you want, but I can’t understand why a reviewer needs to know my age. Perhaps he believes in astrology, then I can tell him the date and hour of my birth so that he can cast my horoscope.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna and died on April 29, 1951 of prostate cancer in Cambridge. After his death, many respected publications, in particular The Times of London, reported that Wittgenstein came from a famous princely family. (We will rightly remember at least Count Peter Christianovich Wittgenstein, whose corps protected St. Petersburg from Napoleon in the War of 1812.) The confusion was added by some of the “aristocratic” Wittgensteins themselves, who agreed to confirm their relationship. The history of the Wittgenstein family is dark and complicated, most likely because in November 1938 the SS burned the synagogue in Korbach, where its archives were destroyed.

Ludwig's father Karl Wittgenstein was a major industrialist, the king of the steel industry of the Danube Monarchy. They said about him: “Austro-Hungarian Krupp.” Wittgenstein approached this fact in his biography as follows: “My father was a businessman. And I'm also a businessman. I want my philosophy to be like business. So that she would settle something, put it in order.”

The death of his father in 1913 made him one of the richest people in Europe. On the eve of the World War, prominent Austrian poets Georg Trakl and Rainer Maria Rilke, later the artist Oskar Kokoschka, and the Viennese architect Adolf Loos received large money transfers from an unknown person. Ludwig explained his gesture as a family tradition. And these were not empty words. It was none other than Carl Wittgenstein who financed the construction of Vienna's famed Secession Exhibition Hall. The legend of the nine concert grand pianos that stood throughout the rooms of the Wittgenstein palace gives an idea of ​​the predominant direction of the family's artistic interests. Everyone's main hobby was music. Brahms visited the Wittgensteins' home in a friendly manner.

Of Ludwig's four brothers, three committed suicide. The fourth brother, Paul, was predicted to have a future as a great pianist. He began giving concerts with success even before the First World War. At the front, the virtuoso’s right hand was torn off. He had to continue his artistic career, which Paul did not want to interrupt, playing with one hand. Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel wrote piano music for the left hand especially for him. Ravel's famous D minor concerto, by the way, was written for the left hand of Paul Wittgenstein. Prokofiev wanted to collaborate with him, but Paul announced that he did not understand a single note in his music, and asked the composer not to write music for him. Ludwig didn't like this whole idea. He convinced his unfortunate brother that the public came to his concerts with the goal of gawking at the one-armed pianist. However, he never liked Paul's musical interpretations. Ludwig Wittgenstein recalled such an incident with obvious pleasure. One day in his youth he was studying in his room when Paul burst into his room shouting: “I can’t play when you’re at home. I feel your skepticism, penetrating even through the walls."

Ludwig was distinguished by some extraordinary experience of music. The true story from his Cambridge days, as told by Malcolm, is: “A student who lived in Whewell's courtyard, a floor or two below Wittgenstein, had a piano, which the student often played. The sounds reached Wittgenstein's rooms and literally drove him into a state of frenzy, especially when the music was familiar to him. He couldn't think when he heard the piano. Wittgenstein solved this problem in his characteristic way. He purchased a large second-hand fan that produced a steady hum when running, loud enough to drown out a piano. I came to him several times for philosophical conversations when the fan was running, but this roar did not allow me to concentrate, while it did not bother Wittgenstein at all.” He played the clarinet excellently, at one time he even thought of becoming a conductor of a symphony orchestra; in the workshop of the Viennese sculptor Drobill he sculpted a bust of his girlfriend, a beautiful Swedish woman; built a luxurious mansion for another beauty - his sister Gretl, who was friends with Freud, after which he signed with great pleasure: “architect Wittgenstein.” Finally, he did not receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, most likely due to an oversight of the Nobel Committee. The author of the Logico-Philosophical Treatise has long been considered among the recognized classics of German literature. Let us remind ourselves that Henri Bergson in 1927 and Bertrand Russell in 1950 became Nobel laureates in the field of literature for their philosophical works.

For all his artistic inclinations, Wittgenstein did not see real artistic talent in himself. “In my artistic actions there is nothing but good manners,” he wrote. My home for Gretl the fruit of an undeniable ear for music, good manners, an expression of great understanding (of a certain culture, etc.). But there is no primitive life in it, no wild life striving to break out.” Whereas, according to his common sense, a wild beast must live in any worthwhile art.

Propeller dilemma

Wittgenstein considered one incident from his childhood to be the threshold of his path to philosophy. As an eight- or nine-year-old boy, he stood on the threshold of the house and painfully thought: “Why do people tell the truth when it is much more profitable to lie?”

To tell the truth, young Ludwig had no inclination towards anything other than technology. At the age of six he designed a sewing machine. His passion for all kinds of mechanisms, technical devices and crafts remained with him throughout his life. “Wittgenstein once took me to Trinity College to look at a well-functioning toilet and study its design,” recalls Norman Malcolm. “Even in the last years of his life,” writes the Finnish logician Georg von Wright, “he could spend the whole day among his beloved steam engines in the South Kensington Museum.” Learned ladies were the subject of his special indifference. “But he was fascinated when he saw Mrs. Letty Ramsey doing some complex sewing, and wanted to watch her and find out how it was done,” recalls one of Ludwig’s acquaintances.

Philosophy became for Wittgenstein a consequence of too close attention to technical issues. After graduating from school in 1906, he planned to study with the famous physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. But the studies did not take place: Boltzmann committed suicide. And Wittgenstein became seriously interested in aeronautics. While studying to become an engineer in Manchester, he focused on propeller design. This proved to be a challenging task that made him interested in the logical foundations of mathematics. So in 1911, Wittgenstein ended up in Cambridge with Bertrand Russell. According to the latter, after a month their conversations began to touch on another issue:

Please tell me, am I a complete idiot or not?

My friend, I don’t know. But why are you asking?

Because if I'm an idiot, I'll become an aeronaut. And if not, a philosopher.

Both interlocutors' doubts about Wittgenstein's complete genius had disappeared by the following summer. “The avalanche of his intellect makes me seem like a small snowball,” writes Russell. He says that he begins his work every morning with hope and finishes it every evening in utter despair.” Russell worries that Wittgenstein will commit suicide. But Ludwig is tormented by the thought of death in a completely different way. He is tormented by an unbearable fear that sudden death will prevent him from finishing something great. Wittgenstein's first scientific talk at the Moral Science Club in Cambridge covered the topic "What is philosophy?" and was distinguished by its regal brevity. It lasted four minutes.

The outbreak of the World War in 1914 changed the lives of friends. Bertrand Russell went to prison for untimely pacifism. Wittgenstein, a subject of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, exempted from military service for health reasons, volunteered for the front. There in Galicia he acquired “A Brief Exposition of the Gospel” by Count Leo Tolstoy. The ethical teaching of the late Tolstoy, which developed the ideas of opposing evil as error, non-resistance to it with violence and selfless service to people, made a huge impression on Wittgenstein. Many years later he said about Tolstoy: “Here is a real man. He has the right to write." The outstanding German logician Frege wrote anxious letters to Wittgenstein at the front, worrying about whether he had enough time to study logic. In the early summer of 1916, Wittgenstein apparently fell into the thick of the Russian Brusilov breakthrough, which cost Austria-Hungary one and a half million of its soldiers. This can be guessed from the break in his diary entries. They begin again with a complaint that he has lost the thread of his mathematical reasoning.

The philosopher ended the war on Mount Montecassino in the vicinity of Naples. The leisure of Italian captivity allowed him to finish writing a book he called “Logical-Philosophical Treatise.” Out of old friendship, Russell tried to write a preface. Such a recommendation from the lips of a venerable philosopher opened the way for the work of an unknown author. Wittgenstein declared Russell's preface to be superficial and incorrect, distorting his thought, and refused to publish his book with such a preface. “Proud as Lucifer,” muttered Russell. Wittgenstein's own preface ended with the words: "The truth of the thoughts expressed here seems to me irrefutable and final." All major philosophical questions were resolved as far as possible. So the genius no longer intended to study philosophy.

Barmaley

From the history of philosophy it is known that Thales, Heraclitus and Democritus were prevented from philosophizing by money. But in this assumption we can only trust Diogenes Laertius, who wrote comprehensive biographies of the greatest philosophers of antiquity many centuries later.

After the war, Wittgenstein transferred all his capital to the names of his relatives. According to his calculations, the relatives were rich enough that his millions could not corrupt them further. Subsequently, he refused to accept even Christmas gifts from them, since he himself did not earn money for the gifts. He served as a hotel porter, a gardener, and was thinking about joining a monastery. It ended with Ludwig completing a six-month course for primary school teachers and deciding to devote himself to educating the younger generation in the Austrian countryside. The teacher Wittgenstein rejected the first place offered to him, because in the central square of a small railway station he found a fountain and well-groomed paths that were at odds with his ideas about genuine village life.

The two villages in the Austrian Alps where Wittgenstein taught from 1921 to 1926 turned out to be truly gloomy backwaters and showed him such human types that they soon sowed a feeling of some disappointment. In the village, Wittgenstein encountered the same “vulgarity and baseness” as in Cambridge, and people even “more worthless and irresponsible than anywhere else.” In his youth, the son of a millionaire amazed his friends by not staying in the most luxurious hotels. Now, with the modesty of his life, Wittgenstein confused the poor Austrian peasants. The best students who were allowed to join him for lunch told their parents chilling stories about what he ate. The children followed him. The parents hated him, reasoning in their own way: the teacher wanted to discourage them from peasant labor and lure them to the city. Ludwig Wittgenstein's teaching career ended in a scandalous trial on charges of torturing young children.

The book on philosophy “Logical-Philosophical Treatise,” which he published several years earlier, had by that time become the bible of the Viennese positivists. The author accepted their worship with restraint. The head of the Vienna Circle, professor at the University of Vienna Maurice Schlick, carefully coordinated with Wittgenstein, as far as possible, both the list of selected persons admitted to the philosophical conversation and the range of questions that could be asked in such emergency circumstances. However, instead of answering questions, Wittgenstein preferred to entertain himself by reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore to the audience.

They treated him completely differently in England. The campaign to lure Wittgenstein to Cambridge had been going on for many years. He would not have gone there in 1929 if he had not known that he had to write a new book and explain the whole philosophy again. This book will be Philosophical Investigations. The famous economist Keynes met him at the Cambridge station. “God has arrived,” Keynes told his wife.

Around this time, the most serious love affair in Wittgenstein's life began. She was a beauty and a Swedish aristocrat. Her name was Margarita, and she was least interested in philosophy. He was almost twice her age. Wittgenstein set a condition for Margarita not to try to penetrate his inner world, which she easily fulfilled. Their relationship left their acquaintances and relatives perplexed. Considering life to be suffering, Wittgenstein did not intend to have children, but he was thinking about getting married. In the summer of 1931, he invited Margarita to the Norwegian fjords, where they were to spend time separately reflecting on the seriousness of the step ahead of them. After two weeks of such a life, Margarita went to visit a friend in Rome.

How to cure yourself of philosophy

“People who keep asking ‘why?’ are like tourists standing in front of a building and reading the history of its creation in their guidebook. It prevents them from seeing the building itself.” According to Wittgenstein, philosophy must be treated like a disease of the mind: “Philosophical problems must completely disappear. The real discovery is that you can stop philosophizing whenever you want.”

Since the time of Plato, European philosophy has comprehended the truths of the world, becoming its generalization. For example, in Plato’s dialogue “Hippias the Greater,” his hero Socrates, playing the simpleton, asks the learned sophist Hippias about what is beautiful, and receives the answer: a beautiful pot, a beautiful girl, a beautiful horse. According to Socrates, these answers are an example of mental helplessness, the inability to see the general, the “idea” of beauty, on which the existence of all beautiful things in the momentary earthly particular depends. The discovery of such fundamental “ideas” of the universe is supposedly true philosophical wisdom and the calling of philosophy. It's not complicated: wisdom is to understand the principles.

The ironic Socrates makes the self-confident Hippias laugh. If Wittgenstein had the opportunity to take part in their philosophical dispute, he would have laughed at Socrates: “If I say that “A” has beautiful eyes, then I may be asked: what do you find beautiful in them? And I, for example, will answer: almond-shaped, long eyelashes, delicate eyelids. But what do these eyes have in common with a Gothic cathedral, which also seems beautiful to me? Would I say that they—the eyes and the cathedral—make the same impression on me?” We use the same words for different reasons and under the influence of different feelings. One word is suitable for different occasions. The imagination of philosophers attaches the contours of great philosophical questions to what turn out to be different uses of words. Hiding from us the dissimilarities of life situations, the words “send us in pursuit of chimeras.”

What does language come from? Opening any dictionary at random, we will find “words” and “meanings” in it. “Here is the word, and here is its meaning. Money and a cow that can be bought with it,” Wittgenstein quipped about this. In reality, in such a detached form, language does not exist at all. It exists in people's communication. No one speaks words without context and purpose. Speech always appears as a practice of communication in a specific life situation. In relation to this speech and life practice, “meaning” is not what is given in advance, but what is obtained in the end. According to Wittgenstein’s coined formula, “the meaning of a word is its use.” Ka, to the word they use, that’s what it means. Words have stable meanings insofar as they are used in repeated speech situations. Wittgenstein calls them “language games.” All this sounds rather a little unusual than difficult to understand. In the end, we ourselves, when studying a foreign language, become involved in its “language games” and know that “learning words” is not enough.

It is not proper for a philosopher to imagine himself as a cow giving milk. True philosophy must become an activity of clarifying language. “I am trying to show how we actually use words,” Wittgenstein sums up the meaning of his own philosophy. This or that expression should sometimes be extracted from the language and, having been cleaned, it can be reintroduced into circulation.” This philosophy is destructive. But from it “only castles in the air are destroyed and the soil of language on which they stand is cleared.”

For slavery and war

Any mentality that was not rooted in a real life need was deeply antipathetic to him: “Our children are taught at school that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen gases, and sugar is made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Anyone who doesn't understand this is stupid. The most important issues are being kept silent."

Wittgenstein's philosophy seems to be confined to a circle of abstract logical and linguistic questions. But this is only the first, “written half” of his philosophy, as the author of the Logical-Philosophical Treatise put it. In his famous letter to Ludwig von Ficker, he once explained the following: “My work consists of two parts. The first part is presented here. And the second is everything that I didn’t write. The most important thing is this second part. My book, as it were, limits the scope of the ethical from within.” Such special questions existed for Wittgenstein as a way to understand the limits of what a person is generally able to think and say. His final judgment sounds like a death sentence. Our words are just “perishable vessels”, unable to contain the real topics that should concern a person. Our language is not suitable for talking about ethics: “Ethics cannot be said.” All words about good and evil will remain lies. “Escape through the walls of our prison (from the helplessness of our own language) is completely, absolutely hopeless.” Escape is impossible.

The worst thing you can come up with in such a hopeless situation is to continue talking about the good and moral as if nothing had happened. Even more precisely: “People cannot be led to goodness. They can only be led somewhere. Good lies outside the space of facts.” When Bertrand Russell was planning to join the International Organization for Peace and Freedom in the 1920s, Wittgenstein did not hide his disappointment and indignation. Russell, offended by this, remarked to him that he himself, perhaps, would have joined the “International Organization for War and Slavery.” Wittgenstein immediately agreed with this assumption. He shared his idea of ​​publishing Russell's books in two colors. Let his works on mathematical logic be red, and all philosophy students should read them. Russell's books on ethics and politics should be published in blue, and no one should be allowed to read them under any circumstances.

Cambridge professor Moore's wife, Dorothy, found Wittgenstein's conversations with her seriously ill husband too turbulent. Wittgenstein was furious. According to his concepts, if a philosopher dies during a philosophical debate, then for him it will be a proper death. In the spring of 1945, when Russian self-propelled guns were directly firing at the Reichstag and the British were crying with joy, Wittgenstein addressed them with the question: “Imagine what a terrible situation a person like Hitler must be in now.” As for the Soviet Union, Wittgenstein almost moved there. His Russian language teacher told with amazement that she saw Wittgenstein’s volume of Dostoevsky, in which all the accents were marked. Wittgenstein was offered the choice of a department in Kazan or a teaching position at Moscow University.

Regarding the Stalinist regime, without embarrassment or reservations, Wittgenstein spoke in the sense that “tyranny does not outrage him.” His review of Lenin sounds almost favorable: Lenin’s works on philosophy are, of course, complete nonsense, “but at least he wanted to do something.” Wittgenstein liked the Shchusevsky Mausoleum on Red Square. “You know, I don’t have a very good opinion of modern architecture,” Wittgenstein said to Drury. But this tomb in the Kremlin is quite well built.” Regarding St. Basil's Cathedral (“one of the most beautiful buildings he had ever seen”), Wittgenstein enthusiastically recounted the legend of how the Tsar ordered the builders of the temple to be blinded so that they could not build something similar a second time. Wittgenstein added that he did not know whether this story was true, “but he hoped so.” “I was shocked,” recalls Drury, “that Wittgenstein hoped this terrible story was true.”

He scolded “those who make speeches against the invention of the atomic bomb” as “scum of the intelligentsia.” This idea will be clearer to us if we remember the same Bertrand Russell. In 1955, Russell, along with Einstein and Joliot-Curie, initiated the creation of the Pugwash Movement of Scientists for Peace and Disarmament. But in 1946, in the name of world peace, Bertrand Russell passionately urged the British government to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union.

Wittgenstein considered a sense of humor mandatory for a philosopher. He knew how to joke and fool around. “One day, when we were walking with him late in the evening,” Malcolm recalls, “he, pointing to the constellation Cassiopeia, noticed that it was shaped like the letter W, which is his last name. Like I said, I think it's an inverted M for Malcolm. With the most serious face, he convinced me that I was mistaken. But such moments were relatively rare. Most often he was gloomy. By nature, Wittgenstein was a deep pessimist regarding the prospects of both his own and all of humanity as a whole.” “I look without sympathy at the flow of European civilization, not understanding its purpose, if any,” he wrote. Once, while walking around Cambridge, Wittgenstein saw in a store window portraits of three great people of the 19th century, namely Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin, and then three portraits of his great contemporaries - Russell, Freud and Einstein. In the faces of the last three he noted traces of obvious degeneration.

Igor Dubrovsky

Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna into the family of a steel magnate of Jewish origin. His parents were Karl and Leopoldina Wittgenstein. He was the youngest of eight children born into one of the most famous and wealthy families of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Among his brothers is the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right hand in the war. His father's parents, Hermann Christian and Fanny Wittgenstein, were born into Jewish families, but converted to Protestantism after moving from Saxony to Vienna in the 1850s, successfully assimilating into the Viennese Protestant professional classes. There is a story that Wittgenstein once told one of his friends that he was the only philosopher in the world who had not read Aristotle. Another of the myths and stories surrounding the thinker is the hypothesis that he studied in the same class with Adolf Hitler.

Having begun to study engineering, he became acquainted with the works of Gottlieb Frege, which turned his interest from the design of aircraft, he was engaged in the design of propellers, to the problem of the philosophical foundations of mathematics. Wittgenstein had varied abilities and was a talented musician, sculptor and architect, although he was only partially able to realize his artistic potential. In his youth, he was spiritually close to the circle of the Viennese literary-critical avant-garde, grouped around the publicist and writer Karl Kraus and the magazine “Torch” he published.

In 1911, Wittgenstein went to Cambridge, where he became a student, assistant and friend of another famous philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell. In 1913 he returned to Austria and in 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered to go to the front. In 1917, Wittgenstein was captured. During the fighting and his stay in a prisoner of war camp, Wittgenstein almost completely wrote his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The book was published in German in 1921 and in English in 1922. Its appearance made a strong impression on the philosophical world of Europe, but Wittgenstein, believing that all the main philosophical problems in the Tractatus had been solved, was already busy with something else: working as a teacher in a rural school. By 1926, however, it became clear to him that problems still remained, that his Treatise had been misinterpreted, and, finally, that some of the ideas it contained were erroneous. Since 1929, Wittgenstein has lived in Great Britain, and from 1939 to 1947 he worked at Cambridge as a professor. From this time until his death in 1951, having interrupted his academic studies to work as an orderly in a London hospital during the Second World War, Wittgenstein developed a fundamentally new philosophy of language. The main work of this period was Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953.

Wittgenstein's philosophy can be divided into “early” philosophy, represented by the Tractatus, and “late” philosophy, expounded in the Philosophical Investigations, as well as in the Blue and Brown Books.

Wittgenstein died in April 1951 from cancer and was buried in Cambridge.

The philosophy of the early Wittgenstein is reflected in his most famous work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, written during captivity during the First World War and published in Germany in 1921. The publication was accompanied by a foreword by the philosopher's friend Bertrand Russell.

Briefly, the meaning of the work is usually presented in the form of seven aphorisms:

The world is everything that takes place;

What is the case, what is a fact, is the existence of atomic facts;

The logical image of facts is thought;

A thought is a meaningful sentence;

A proposition is a truth function of elementary propositions;

What cannot be spoken about must be kept silent;

The general form of the truth function is: . This is the general form of a sentence.

Wittgenstein believed that he had outlined all views on philosophy and all problems in this treatise and decided not to return to the question of philosophy.

Wittgenstein does not reject the existence of God; on the contrary, he believes that if we can think about Him, then He exists. According to him, logic is transcendental (6.13).

The main problem of philosophy, as well as many problems in the world in general, lies in our limitation to express everything in words. In fact, all philosophy is nothing more than “criticism of language” (4.003-4.0031).

The border of our language is the border of our world (5.6). Everything that we can reason about, talk about, enters our world, it is logical and no matter how complex it is at times, it is true.

In the Tractatus Logical-Philosophicus one can find Wittgenstein's reflection on a moderate form of solipsism. As for example: I am my world (my microcosm) (5.63.); the subject does not belong to the world but is the boundary of the world (5.632). Moderate solipsism according to Wittgenstein is no different from realism (5.634).

Logic is given the place of reflection of the world and not theory but the mathematical-logical method, since the sentences of mathematics are equations, and they are not real sentences but pseudo and therefore do not express any thought. (6.13, 6.2, 6.21).

The world does not depend on the will of man (6.373) and its meaning lies beyond the boundaries of this world (6.41). All sentences are equivalent (6.4) and none will say anything different. The world consists of names, by naming something we seem to give it the opportunity to be in this world, since, as was written above, I am my microcosm.

The Logical-Philosophical Treatise was happily accepted by many philosophers and students. The work became a reference book for the positivist philosophers of the Vienna Circle. But as with all ideas and thoughts, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas were not entirely correctly understood, and to revise and explain his positions, the philosopher returns to his works.

The philosophers of the Vienna Circle considered that since it is impossible to talk about something, one should remain silent; they suggested that all those topics that Wittgenstein did not touch upon should simply be removed and the language made simple, protocol, since it is simply pointless to say a lot. This was one of the main reasons that prompted Wittgenstein to reconsider his philosophy.

The result of the revision was a set of ideas in which language is understood as a moving system of contexts, “language games,” subject to the emergence of contradictions associated with the unclear meaning of the words and expressions used, which must be eliminated by clarifying the latter. Clarifying the rules for using linguistic units and eliminating contradictions is the task of philosophy. Wittgenstein's new philosophy is a set of methods and practices rather than a theory. He himself believed that this was the only way a discipline could look like, constantly forced to adapt to its changing subject. The views of the late Wittgenstein found supporters primarily in Oxford and Cambridge, giving rise to linguistic philosophy.

The philosopher proposed the term “language game” instead of the term metalanguage (language for describing language) and writes about it in “Philosophical Investigations” of 1945. A language game is a system of generally accepted or conventional rules in which the speaker takes part. The language game implied complete freedom of meanings and contexts.

The main work of the “late” period of Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be considered “Philosophical Investigations”, work on which was carried out from the 30s. The work was published in 1953, 2 years after the death of the philosopher. Neglect of the canons of traditional scientific presentation, as in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, allowed Wittgenstein to destroy many of the stereotypes of traditional academic scholasticism and create the most original and significant philosophical work of the 20th century. The subject of the study is ordinary language and its use, associated with the emergence of various paradoxes. Wittgenstein seeks to show what language is in its ordinary understanding. The main judge of the correctness of judgments is also simple, everyday language.

Wittgenstein began to view philosophy not only as a therapist helping people in search of answers to the imperfect questions of the limited language of man, but also as the very search for these answers and questions that are deeply rooted in people. Apparently, Wittgenstein himself was not satisfied with such reflections and continued to search for a position regarding language and philosophy.

The significance of Wittgenstein's ideas is enormous, but their interpretation and understanding, as many years of research in this direction have shown, is very difficult. This applies equally to both his “early” and “late” philosophy. Opinions and assessments differ significantly, indirectly confirming the scale and depth of Wittgenstein’s work.

In Wittgenstein's philosophy, questions and themes were posed and developed that largely determined the character of the new Anglo-American analytical philosophy. There are known attempts to bring his ideas closer to phenomenology and hermeneutics, as well as to religious philosophy (in particular, Eastern). In recent years, many texts from his extensive manuscript heritage have been published in the West. Every year in Austria (in the town of Kirchberg an der Wexel), Wittgenstein symposia are held, bringing together philosophers and scientists from all over the world.

Wittgenstein's works had a tremendous influence on the development of linguistic philosophy. The philosopher’s works continue to be reprinted and published almost annually, providing new food for thought and development of philosophical thought, and, In my opinion ,the full depth of Wittgenstein’s ideas has not yet been fully understood and requires comprehension.

During his not-so-long life, Ludwig Wittgenstein managed to be a millionaire, engineer, soldier, village teacher, monastery gardener, architect and orderly. However, for some reason, humanity remembered him only as the greatest thinker.

Sergey Krivokharchenko

And this despite the fact that Wittgenstein himself considered philosophy not only meaningless, but also in some ways even harmful.

Wittgenstein believed that his ideas would put an end to all philosophy that existed before him

How Wittgenstein managed to live 62 years and never commit suicide is a mystery. Not only did the philosopher himself not recover from severe depression for years (and besides, according to some researchers, he suffered from sluggish schizophrenia), but also the people around him, as if on purpose, set bad examples for him. Wittgenstein's relatives, friends and acquaintances lost their lives with frightening ease.

In 1902, Hans, the elder brother of the future philosopher, who left his native Austria for Cuba, committed suicide. A year later, thirteen-year-old Ludwig had to go into mourning for his second brother, Rudolf, who hanged himself in Berlin. Fortunately, Ludwig still had two brothers - Paul and Kurt. It seemed that they would not commit such stupidity. However, in 1918, an officer of the Austro-Hungarian army, Kurt, was surrounded with his platoon and found no other way out than to shoot himself in the temple.

After graduating from school, Ludwig was about to continue his studies with the Austrian physicist Boltzmann, but he also took his own life. The mournful list could be extended for a couple more pages, adding to the suicides those acquaintances and friends of the philosopher who died almost every year from serious illnesses and accidents.

In general, Wittgenstein had plenty of reasons to be in a bad mood. But Ludwig instinctively suppressed his own desire for self-destruction with radical lifestyle changes and extravagant behavior.

Childhood, adolescence, youth

Ludwig Joseph Johann was born on April 26, 1889 in the family of one of the richest people in Austria-Hungary - steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein. The elder Wittgenstein's three daughters, four sons and one wife lived in luxury and prosperity. Subsequently, Ludwig even claimed that there were nine pianos in their mansion. However, biographers refuse to believe this. Although it is known for certain that the composers Gustav Mahler and Johannes Brahms regularly visited the Wittgensteins, and the brothers Hans and Paul were talented pianists, it remains unclear who played the remaining five instruments. (By the way, after Paul lost his right hand in the war, Maurice Ravel composed the now famous Piano Concerto in D minor for the left hand especially for him.) Ludwig himself played the clarinet excellently as a child.

Paul Wittgenstein remained a concert musician even after his arm was blown off in the war.

According to Wittgenstein, he began to think about philosophical questions at the age of eight: “I see myself standing at the door and wondering why people tell the truth when it is much more profitable to lie.”

Having received a fair amount of primary education at home, Ludwig went for secondary education. It is noteworthy that one of his classmates at the Linz School turned out to be Adolf Hitler * (then still known under the name Schicklgruber), who, after the seizure of Austria in 1938, forced Wittgenstein to take English citizenship.

* Note Phacochoerus "a Funtik: « In fairness, it must be added that the only confirmation of this is a blurry black and white photograph of Wittgenstein’s class found in 1998, in which, if desired, almost all of Wittgenstein’s classmates could be mistaken for young Hitler »

In 1908, after two years of studying as a mechanical engineer in Berlin, Ludwig entered the Manchester Higher Technical School, where he developed a mathematical model of the propeller and found out the peculiarities of the movement of kites in the upper atmosphere. Then Wittgenstein developed a new hobby - mathematical logic, and in 1911 he went to Cambridge, where Bertrand Russell, the author of numerous works on this subject, taught.

Rising star of European philosophy

One of the first dialogues between Wittgenstein and Russell looked something like this: “Tell me, professor, am I a total idiot?” - "Don't know. But why are you asking?" - “If I’m a total idiot, I’ll become an aeronaut. If not, a philosopher.”

Lord Russell, according to his letters, initially found his new student “extremely tiresome,” “a terrible debater,” and “a real punishment.” “I asked him to accept the assumption that there was no rhinoceros in this room,” wrote an indignant Russell. “But he didn’t accept!” But just six months later, the famous logician said to Wittgenstein’s sister: “We expect that the next significant step in philosophy will be made by your brother.”

The very first report of 23-year-old Ludwig, which was simply called “What is philosophy?”, created a real sensation. It took Wittgenstein four minutes to develop the topic.

Bertrand Russell was the first to recognize the genius in the young Wittgenstein.

Ludwig stayed in Cambridge only until August 1913. And even then, in the last six months, he was not feeling well - he was moping and kept talking about his imminent death (the timing of the sad date ranged from two months to four years).

In the end, deciding to change his surroundings, Wittgenstein and his friend David Pinsent went on a trip to Norway and unexpectedly stayed there for a long time. Pinsent returned alone. In Cambridge they decided with relief that Wittgenstein had finally gone completely mad. But Ludwig himself was extremely pleased with himself. He considered his time in the north the most productive of his life. It was in Norway that the aspiring philosopher began work on his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein's only philosophical book that was published during his lifetime). At the same time, despite the distance, he managed to quarrel with Bertrand Russell, who did not like the mentoring tone of the letters of the young genius.

Relatives, friends and acquaintances committed suicide with frightening ease

The only thing Norway lacked was decent sparring partners. Wittgenstein believed that a philosopher who does not engage in debate is like a boxer who does not enter the ring. Ludwig wrote to Edward Moore, a Cambridge teacher and founder of analytical philosophy: you are the only one in the whole wide world who can understand me, come urgently. Moore did not want to trudge north, but Ludwig was very persistent.

In fact, he wanted more than just communication. Wittgenstein came up with the idea to submit his dissertation with Moore and receive a bachelor's degree. Moreover, when Edward arrived in Norway, it turned out that he would also have to perform the duties of a secretary: he wrote a work called “Logic” under the dictation of Wittgenstein.

But Trinity College refused to accept Logic as a dissertation: there was no preface, review, or list of references. Upon learning of this, Wittgenstein wrote a furious letter to Moore: “If I cannot count on an exception being made for me even in such idiotic details, then I can generally go straight to the devil; if I have the right to count on this, and you did not do this, then - for God’s sake - you can go to him yourself.”

Millionaire

In 1913, Ludwig's father died, leaving his son a huge fortune. Wittgenstein did not think for long about what to do with the money that distracted him from thinking about the frailty of existence: he decided to help his brothers in poverty - artists, writers and philosophers. Rainer Maria Rilke received twenty thousand crowns from Wittgenstein. Another 80 thousand were distributed among other artists. Wittgenstein refused the rest of the money in favor of his relatives.

Soldier

The First World War began, and Wittgenstein decided to go to the front. Not only for patriotic reasons. He believed that dying at the front was much more honorable than simply shooting himself on the sofa in the living room or drinking poison in the dining room. And if they don’t kill him, then, as he wrote in his diary before one of the battles, he will at least have “a chance to become a decent person.”

At first, however, they did not want to take him to the front line due to his poor health. “If this happens, I will kill myself,” threatened Wittgenstein, constantly looking for an opportunity to settle scores with his disgusted life. So Ludwig ended up on the Russian front and even took part in the Brusilov breakthrough. Naturally, on the side being broken through. In Wittgenstein's diary one can find a note that in the process of breaking through he "lost the thread of mathematical reasoning."

Wittgenstein did not succeed in dying the death of the brave. Moreover, he received a medal for valor, and a little later he was promoted to lieutenant. At the same time, I had to finish work on the Logical-Philosophical Treatise.

Going to the front as a volunteer, Ludwig dreamed of a quick death.

Eventually, in October 1918, Wittgenstein was captured by the Italians. Wittgenstein's friends tried to release him early, but Ludwig was against it. He did not see the difference between ordinary life and captivity and therefore spent almost a year there on a general basis.

Returning home, Wittgenstein learned the sad news: his Cambridge friend David Pinsent, who fought for the British, died in an air battle.

Teacher

In 1921, in the 32nd year of his life, Ludwig published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, for which Russell tried to write an introduction, but Wittgenstein found the Englishman’s text superficial and composed the preface himself. It ended with the following passage: “The truth of the thoughts expressed here seems to me irrefutable and final.” Consequently, there was no point in returning to philosophical activity. And Wittgenstein made another feat - he realized the dream of every intellectual: he went to the people and became a primary school teacher. And not in some Vienna, but in the godforsaken Alpine village of Trattenbach.

Even during the war, Wittgenstein read Tolstoy's transcription of the Gospels, which was popular in Europe in those years, and fell into an extreme degree of Tolstoyanism. Ludwig probably dreamed of teaching children reasonable, kind, eternal things against the backdrop of pastoral landscapes, and in the evenings sitting on a pile, drinking fresh milk and talking with wise old men. In reality, everything turned out much more prosaic. The fresh air didn't do his spleen any good. A year later, Wittgenstein wrote to friends that the peasants were vulgar, his school colleagues were vile, and in general all people were insignificant.

1925 Wittgenstein (far right adult) and students from Otterthal Primary School.

Ludwig lived extremely modestly, ate so poorly that even the poorest peasants were horrified. In addition, the parents of the students disliked Wittgenstein: they believed that the new teacher instilled in them an aversion to agriculture and seduced the children with stories about the city.

Even the “miracle” performed by Wittgenstein did not help. A steam engine broke down at a local factory, and the invited engineers were unable to fix it. Ludwig, actually passing by, asked permission to look at the mechanism, wandered around the machine and, calling four workers, ordered them to rhythmically tap on the unit. The machine started working, and Wittgenstein, whistling Mahler, went on his way.

Having received a huge inheritance, Ludwig got rid of it in a matter of months

They say that Wittgenstein turned out to be an excellent teacher. He took children on excursions to Vienna, where he told them about the architecture and structure of various machines. Ludwig's children adored him. Even despite the fact that Wittgenstein, quite in the spirit of the time, used corporal punishment.

For five years, the philosopher taught in three villages. Work in the last of them, in Ottertal, ended in scandal. In April 1926, he was sued: they say that teacher Wittgenstein beats his students so much that they faint and bleed. There was a trial and an examination for mental sanity. Wittgenstein was acquitted, but he had no desire to return to school.

Gardener and architect

The house that Ludwig worked on is still shown to tourists.

While still teaching, Wittgenstein said that he wanted to find a job as a janitor or cab driver. In 1926, he had a new idea - to become a monk, but the abbot of the monastery where Wittgenstein turned to dissuaded him. He had to be content with the position of a gardener in a Viennese monastery for three months, until his sister Gretl announced that she was going to build a house. Ludwig volunteered to participate.

The Thinker took upon himself the most important thing - the details. Door handles, doors, window frames and more. Work on the house continued until 1928. My sister was pleased.

Quote not a sparrow

Memorize these six famous quotes from Wittgenstein and apply them the next time you pick up a girl at a disco.

Whatever can be said must be said clearly.

If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside of me, only infinitely more powerful, then I would consider it my immediate task to challenge him to a duel.

What cannot be spoken about must be kept silent about.

I am the only philosophy professor who has not read Aristotle.

The border of my language is the border of my world.

People who keep asking “why?” are like tourists standing in front of a building and reading about the history of its creation in their guidebook. This prevents them from seeing the building itself.

Groom

Margarita Respinger was from Sweden and met Wittgenstein in Vienna while he was lying in his sister’s apartment, healing a leg injured during the construction of a house. Margarita came from a wealthy, respectable family and, naturally, was not at all interested in philosophy, which Ludwig certainly liked.

Their romance lasted five years. Every time Ludwig came to Vienna, Margarita bravely endured going to the cinema together, and only to American films (Ludwig considered European films too abstruse), dinners in dubious cafes (sandwiches and a glass of milk), as well as extremely careless behavior (in the workers' and peasants' style) manner of dressing.

Parents accused Wittgenstein of beating his students until they bled.

Margarita couldn’t stand the joint trip in 1931 - where do you think? - of course, to Norway. Wittgenstein planned everything just perfectly. In order to prepare for their future life together, the lovers had to spend several months separately (in different houses, located ten meters from each other), thinking about the upcoming serious step. Wittgenstein carried out his part of the program perfectly - he thought with all his might. And Margarita only lasted for two weeks. And even then, instead of reading the Bible that Ludwig slipped her, the bride fluttered around the neighborhood, flirted with peasants, swam and learned Norwegian. And then she just upped and left for Rome. Stupid!

Great

Frank Ramsay, Wittgenstein's supervisor

While Wittgenstein was doing who knows what, his Tractatus was exciting the thinking minds of the whole world. In the 1920s, the Vienna Logical Circle was formed in the Austrian capital, and Wittgenstein’s work became a sacred book for its mathematicians, physicists and philosophers. Chairman Moritz Schlick tried his best to establish contact with Wittgenstein in order to invite the guru to meetings of the elected members of the circle. He agreed only on the condition that they would not ask him any questions about philosophy, and that he would choose the topic for conversation himself. As a result, Ludwig happily played the fool in front of his devoted fans: he read, for example, the poems of Rabindranath Tagore.

Wittgenstein always did not have a very high opinion of the mental abilities of those around him and did not believe that anyone was able to perceive his philosophy. But in the process of communicating with fans, he again felt an interest in philosophy. Ludwig returned to Cambridge. True, the thinker still did not have an academic degree and at first was registered at the university as something like a graduate student. Frank Ramsey became his supervisor - he was seventeen years younger than 40-year-old Wittgenstein.

After becoming a philosophy teacher at Cambridge, Ludwig advised students not to study the subject.

To receive his PhD, Ludwig had to write a dissertation and pass an exam. The examiners were Moore and Russell. As a result, the defense turned into a nice conversation between old friends. In conclusion, Wittgenstein consolingly told the professors: “Don’t worry, you’ll never understand what I mean anyway.”

Preparing for teaching - no longer in a rural school, but at the best university in Europe - Wittgenstein suffered another blow of fate: on the eve of his first lecture, his former scientific adviser Ramsey died of viral hepatitis.

Wittgenstein and his Cambridge colleague Francis Skinner. 1933

Legends were formed about how the recognized philosopher gave lectures. Sometimes he would stretch out on the floor and thoughtfully look at the ceiling, thinking aloud about a problem that interested him. Having reached a dead end, Wittgenstein loudly called himself a fool. He almost forbade his students to engage in philosophy professionally. “Go to the factory! - said the teacher. “There will be more benefits.” “It’s better to read detective novels than the philosophical magazine Mind,” he added.

Some students even followed his advice. One of Wittgenstein's most devoted students, Maurice Drury, dropped out of the philosophy department and first helped the homeless, and later became famous as a psychiatrist. Another student, Francis Skinner, who studied mathematics, became a mechanic, to the horror of his parents.

Communist

In 1934, Ludwig came up with another brilliant idea. He decided to go to the Soviet Union for permanent residence. The son of a steel magnate (this often happens) was approving of the communist regime and spoke positively of Lenin (“At least he tried to do something... A very expressive face, something Mongolian in his features. It’s not surprising that, despite materialism, the Russians decided to preserve Lenin's body in eternity") and believed that the mausoleum was a magnificent architectural project. As for another project, St. Basil's Cathedral, Wittgenstein was fascinated by the history of its creation. According to legend, Ivan the Terrible ordered the architects to be blinded so that they could not build anything more beautiful. “I hope this is true,” Ludwig said, horrifying his interlocutors.

Wittgenstein considered Lenin's mausoleum to be a wonderful architectural project

The philosopher quickly learned Russian, “the most beautiful language that can be perceived by ear.” I passed the interview at the embassy without difficulty. But even in the USSR, things did not go as he planned for Wittgenstein.

Ludwig dreamed of going on an expedition to the North to study the life of wild peoples, or becoming, for example, a steelmaker. But he was offered a chair at Kazan University or, for starters, to teach philosophy at Moscow State University (and there, you see, scientific communism). But Wittgenstein was even more offended when Sophia Yanovskaya, a professor of mathematical logic, advised him to read more Hegel.

Having visited Moscow, Leningrad and Kazan in three weeks, Ludwig returned to Cambridge with nothing.

Orderly

When World War II began, Wittgenstein could no longer go to the front: his age did not allow it. Then he got a job as an orderly in a London hospital. They say that even there he showed himself to be a real philosopher: while distributing medicine to the wounded, he advised under no circumstances to drink this stuff.

When our troops approached Berlin in 1945, Ludwig sincerely felt sorry for Hitler. “Just imagine the terrible situation a man like Hitler is in now!” - Ludwig said.

Everything you need to know about Wittgenstein's views to maintain a relaxed conversation among intellectuals.

Traditional philosophy deals with questions of existence (“What came first: the chicken or the Archeopteryx?”), ethics (“Am I a trembling creature or is everyone else such fools?”), metaphysics (“Are there really ghosts?”) and other similar things .

Analytical philosophy, of which Wittgenstein became one of the pillars, believes that all these problems are far-fetched and arose only as a result of the imperfection of language, which obscures and confuses thought. Wittgenstein was interested in how language functions and how different words are used. (Why, for example, do we call green “green”?)

Each sentence of language, according to Wittgenstein, corresponds to a completely specific picture, that is, it reflects a fact (“Masha ate porridge”). But what exactly is the correspondence between a sentence and a fact cannot be expressed in words, even if you crack it.

"Logical-Philosophical Treatise"- the work that brought Wittgenstein universal recognition - is small, it contains some 80 pages. Unlike the vast majority of philosophical works, the Treatise is written in normal human language. Wittgenstein generally believed that any terminology is complete nonsense. Even very complex problems - the tossing of the human soul, the perception of the universe - can be discussed using the most ordinary words, such as “iron” or “fuck”. And if you can’t, then there’s no point in talking about it.

For greater convenience, the book is also divided into points, like an article in a glossy magazine or instructions for using this world:

1. The world is everything that happens to be.
1.1. The world is a collection of facts, not things.
1.11. The world is determined by facts and by the fact that they are all facts.

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