Ludwig Joseph Johann Wittgenstein (German: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein; April 26, 1889, Vienna - April 29, 1951, Cambridge) is an Austrian philosopher and logician, a representative of analytical philosophy, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. He put forward a program for constructing an artificial “ideal” language, the prototype of which is the language of mathematical logic. He understood philosophy as "criticism of the language." He developed the doctrine of logical atomism, which is a projection of the structure of knowledge on the structure of the world [1].
Biography
Born April 26, 1889 in Vienna in the family of a steel magnate of Jewish origin Karl Wittgenstein (German: Karl Wittgenstein; 1847-1913) and Leopoldina Wittgenstein (nee Kalmus, 1850-1926), was the youngest of eight children. His father's parents, Herman Christian Wittgenstein (1802–1878) and Fanny Figdor (1814–1890), were born in Jewish families from Korbach and Kittze, respectively [2], but adopted Protestantism after moving from Saxony to Vienna in the 1850s, successfully assimilated into Vienna's Protestant professional strata of society. The male mother came from the famous Prague Jewish family Kalmus - she was a pianist; her father converted to Catholicism before marriage. Among his brothers is pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right hand in the war, but was able to continue professional musical activity. Famous is the portrait of his sister Margaret Stonborough (English Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein; 1882-1958) by Gustav Klimt (1905).
There is a version set forth in the book of the Australian Kimberly Cornish “The Jew of Linz” (Eng. The Jew of Linz), according to which Wittgenstein studied at the same school and even in the same class with Adolf Hitler [3].
Starting to study engineering, he got acquainted with the work of Gotlob Frege, which turned his interest from the design of aircraft (he was engaged in the construction of an aircraft propeller [1]) to the problem of philosophical foundations of mathematics. Wittgenstein was a talented musician, sculptor and architect, although he only partially managed to realize his artistic abilities. In his youth, he was spiritually close to the circle of the Vienna literary and critical avant-garde, grouped around the publicist and writer Karl Kraus and the Fakel magazine published by him [1].
In 1911 he went to Cambridge, where he became a student, assistant and friend of Russell. In 1913 he returned to Austria and in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered to go to the front. In 1917 he was captured. During the fighting and stay in the prisoner of war camp Wittgenstein almost completely wrote his famous "Logical and Philosophical Treatise" [4]. 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 Treatise had been resolved, was already engaged in a different matter: he worked as a teacher in a rural school. By 1926, however, it became clear to him that the problems still remained, that his Treatise was misinterpreted, and, finally, that some of the ideas contained in it were erroneous.
From 1929 he lived in Great Britain, from 1939-1947 he worked in Cambridge as a professor [5]. In 1935 he visited the USSR [6].
From this time until his death in 1951, interrupting his studies for work as a nurse in a London hospital during World War II, Wittgenstein developed a fundamentally new philosophy of language. The main work of this period was the Philosophical Studies, published posthumously, in 1953.
Wittgenstein’s philosophy is divided into the “early” one, represented by the Treatise, and the later one, set forth in the Philosophical Studies, as well as in the Blue and Brown Books (published in 1958).
He died in Cambridge on April 29, 1951 from prostate cancer [7]. He was buried according to Catholic tradition in a local cemetery at the chapel of St. Aegidius.
Logical and philosophical treatise
Structurally, the “Logical and Philosophical Treatise” consists of seven aphorisms, accompanied by an extensive system of explanatory sentences. Substantially, he offers a theory that solves the main philosophical problems through the prism of the relationship between language and the world.
Language and the world are the central concepts of the whole Wittgenstein philosophy. In the “Treatise” they appear as a “mirror” pair: language reflects the world, because the logical structure of the language is identical to the ontological structure of the world. The world consists of facts, and not of objects, as is expected in most philosophical systems. The world represents the whole set of existing facts. Facts can be simple and complex. Objects are the fact that, entering into interaction, forms facts. Objects have a logical form - a set of properties that allow them to enter into one or another relationship. In the language, simple facts are described in simple sentences. They, not names, are the simplest language units. Complex facts correspond to complex sentences. The whole language is a complete description of everything in the world, that is, all facts. The language also allows a description of possible facts. Thus, the presented language is entirely subject to the laws of logic and lends itself to formalization. All proposals that violate the laws of logic or are not related to observable facts are considered by Wittgenstein to be meaningless. So, sentences of ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics are meaningless. What can be described can be done.
At the same time, Wittgenstein did not at all intend to deprive the significance of the region, which he was extremely worried about, but claimed the futility of the language in them. "What is impossible to talk about, that should be silent" - this is the last aphorism of the Treatise.
The philosophers of the Vienna Circle, for whom Tractat became a reference book, did not accept this last fact, having deployed a program in which the "meaningless" became identical to the "subject to elimination." 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 already understood as a moving system of contexts, “language games”, prone to the emergence of contradictions associated with the ambiguity of the meanings of the words and expressions used, which should be eliminated by clarifying the latter. Clarification of the rules for the use of linguistic units and the elimination of contradictions is the task of philosophy.
Wittgenstein's new philosophy is more a set of methods and practices than a theory. He himself believed that the only way discipline can look, 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.
Influence
The value of Wittgenstein's ideas is enormous, but their interpretation, as shown by several decades of active work in this direction, is very difficult. This applies equally to his "early" and "late" philosophy. Opinions and estimates diverge significantly, indirectly confirming the scale and depth of Wittgenstein's work.
In Wittgenstein's philosophy, questions and topics were posed and developed that largely determined the nature of the latest 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 its vast manuscript heritage have been published in the West. Wittgenstein symposia are held annually in Austria (in the town of Kirchberg am Veksel), bringing together philosophers and scientists from around the world [1].
