The surprising life path of Ludwig Wittgenstein – a member of the wealthy Wittgenstein family from Vienna, a student at the Gymnasium in Linz alongside Hitler, an engineer influenced by Frege, a student and friend of Bertrand Russell, an officer on the fronts of World War I and the author of the "Logical-Philosophical Treatise", who became one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian-British philosopher and logician of Jewish origin, was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna. He was the son of the Jewish steel magnate Carl Wittgenstein. His parents were baptized into Christianity. He was the youngest of eight children. At the end of the 19th century, the Wittgenstein family was one of the wealthiest families in Austria-Hungary. The Wittgenstein estate was one of the centers of cultural life in Vienna: it was visited by the composers Gustav Mahler and Johannes Brahms and the painter Gustav Klimt, who painted a portrait of Ludwig's sister Margaret in 1905. The house had seven grand pianos and all the children in the family played them. Ludwig himself had a perfect musical ear and was destined to become a conductor.
At the age of fourteen, Ludwig left his parents' home to study at the Real Gymnasium in Linz, where his classmate was Adolf Schicklgruber, later Hitler, who was born six days before Wittgenstein. Although the Wittgenstein family converted to Christianity, they were considered Jews by the entire neighborhood. Therefore, the appearance of a Jew in the classroom aroused the dislike of his classmates and the hatred of Hitler. "We did not particularly trust this Jew, […] we doubted his reliability," Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. Wittgenstein was a truth-teller, which made his classmates, and especially Hitler, very angry with him: "A boy who secretly follows his friends is a traitor, […] which is no different from treason against the fatherland. In no way can one consider him a good and decent person, […] he is a little informer from whom a great evil will grow." Hitler's special hostility towards Wittgenstein is explained by great envy: Ludwig came from one of the richest families in Austria-Hungary, was the most talented student in the class, a multidisciplinary person with independent opinions, who did not give in to the crowd and even stood up against it. Apparently, Hitler associated all these foreign qualities with Judaism. Wittgenstein may have been the starting point for the monstrous anti-Semitism of the future Nazi Fuhrer.
Wittgenstein studied at the Technical University of Berlin and the Victoria University of Manchester, and became an engineer, but under the influence of Gottlob Frege, the German logician, mathematician, and philosopher, Wittgenstein began to associate at Cambridge University with the British logician, philosopher, and mathematician Bertrand Russell, later a Nobel Prize winner for literature. Over time, teacher and student became friends. Russell wrote of Wittgenstein: "He was perhaps the most remarkable example of a man of genius – creative, focused, passionate, thorough, and dominant. […] His interest in philosophy is more passionate than mine; compared to his flood of thoughts, my thoughts are like miserable snowballs." So wrote the author of the book "A History of Western Philosophy," for which Russell won the Nobel Prize.
In 1913, Ludwig returned to Austria. That same year, his father died, and as heir, Wittgenstein became one of the richest men in Europe. He anonymously donated large sums to Austrian architects, artists, and writers.
In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, despite being exempted from military service for health reasons, Ludwig volunteered for the regular army. In March 1916, he was assigned to a combat unit on the Russian front, where his unit participated in the most severe battles. During the war, Wittgenstein corresponded with Bertrand Russell. At that time, as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, he corresponded with a subject of a hostile state: solving logical problems was much more important to him than politics or patriotism. During his combat service and in a prisoner-of-war camp, Wittgenstein wrote almost the entire "Logico-Philosophical Treatise", which later became one of the most important philosophical writings of the 20th century. After returning briefly from the front in the summer of 1918, Wittgenstein tried to publish the "Tractate", but the publisher refused to print the book. He returned to the Italian front, where he was taken prisoner in November 1918.
When he returned to Austria in 1919, Wittgenstein gave up his share of the inheritance in favor of his brothers, as he saw money as an obstacle to philosophical activity, following Spinoza, who gave up his father's inherited fortune in favor of his sisters. Wittgenstein published the Logical-Philosophical Tractatus in 1921 in German and in 1922 in English. The appearance of this work made a great impression on the philosophical world and sparked many discussions, in which the author himself did not participate, since he apparently believed that he had presented the solution to all philosophical problems. In his introduction to the Logical-Philosophical Tractatus he wrote: "The correctness of the thoughts presented here seems to me unquestionable and final. Therefore, I believe that the [philosophical] problems raised have been finally solved." In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein argued that the world consists of facts, not objects, and that language determines the boundaries of the world: to understand the world correctly, language must be clarified with the help of logic. One of the central principles of the Tractatus is: "What one cannot speak of, one must remain silent." He argued that from a logical point of view, the statements "there is a God" and "there is no God" are equally meaningless. Wittgenstein felt that even Russell did not understand the Tractatus. Then he abandoned his study of philosophy.
From 1920 to 1926 Wittgenstein worked as a teacher in a rural elementary school, then as a gardener in a monastery, and as an architect: he received an invitation from his sister to design and build her a house in Vienna, and proved himself a talented architect. In the late 20s, Wittgenstein returned to philosophy and moved to Cambridge. Despite his fame, Wittgenstein could not teach at Cambridge University, because he did not have a doctorate, and Russell suggested that he submit the "Treatise" as a doctoral thesis. The work was examined in 1929 by Russell and the philosopher George Edward More. The doctoral defense was more like a conversation between old friends, at the end of which Wittgenstein patted the two experts on the shoulders and said: "Don't worry, I know you will never understand it." In the examination report, More wrote, "I believe this is a work of genius, but, even if I am wrong, this work is far above the standard required for a doctorate." Wittgenstein was appointed a lecturer and became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University. He lived in Britain from 1929, and from 1939 to 1947 worked at Cambridge as Professor of Philosophy.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Wittgenstein proudly declared himself a Jew.
In 1935, after a long study of the Russian language, he visited the Soviet Union, intending to stay there and conduct research, but soon returned to England. A Soviet Jewess, Sophia Yanovskaya, a doctor of philosophy of mathematics, told Wittgenstein so convincingly about the dogmatic approach to philosophy in the Soviet Union that he changed his mind about moving to that country. During World War II, Wittgenstein stopped teaching at the university to work as an orderly in a London hospital. He died in Cambridge on 29 April 1951.
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Interestingly, Rambam's first book, "Words of Logic," also dealt with language and logic - the basic definitions that would inform his later books.
I did not study or know this man's works.
What I did understand was that he was simply an exceptionally brilliant and wise man.
Has an extremely challenging mindset.
And finally he understood a simple and uncomplicated matter.
That a Jew remains a Jew
Even if his parents converted to Christianity.
He proves the words of Chazal
Israel, even though it sinned
Israel is
That alone made the whole article worth it.
I hope others who see this article will also understand.
What this wise genius understood and even said so proudly
Luckily, he sobered up on communism before he "had the chance" to reach the USSR, otherwise he would have been executed as part of the crazy antics of the schizophrenic Stalin.
A fascinating, well-written article, thank you very much! Usually, we focus more on his ideas and less on his life. In general, the relationships between all the components and their nature: language and logic, physics and mathematics, and philosophy-philosophy, are extremely important in enabling an understanding of reality and an explanation of the variety of phenomena in our lives. Wittgenstein raised questions that were sometimes simple and seemed routine, but his answers showed a different way to find solutions and answers.
A beautiful biographical description.
There are other interesting things about him. For example, that at the end of his life he wrote a completely different philosophical work from the treatise, in which he attacks his first work. He was such a genius that even his second work is considered a great work, and philosophers tend to divide his thought into "early Wittgenstein" and "late Wittgenstein," as if they were two different thinkers.
A student was expelled from school after hitting a student.
The list does not do justice to Wittgenstein's philosophical development, even in my own eyes.
She does not tell the rest: the so-called later Wittgenstein saw the Logico-Philosophical Treatise as meaningless and in philosophical investigations moved to an approach in which meaning derives from use, and therefore his early work is fundamentally wrong.
Fascinating, thanks!
Now I'm curious to hear more about his thoughts on language.
Very interesting, but you forgot to mention his most important work, which was published after his death – Philosophical Investigations – an amazing book.
Fascinating writing
This Jew's principle of speaking the truth has metaphysical significance.