Simply Wittgenstein
James C. Klagge
Simply Charly
New York
Copyright © 2016 by James C. Klagge
Cover Illustration by José Ramos
Cover Typography by Scarlett Rugers
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
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ISBN: 978-1-943657-04-9
Contents
Praise for Simply Wittgenstein
Other Great Lives Titles
Series Editor's Foreword
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. The Tractatus
2. Some Complications
3. The Great War
4. Interlude
5. The Philosophical Investigations
6. Wittgenstein's Applications
7. The End
Suggested Reading
Sources
About the Author
Afterword
A Note on the Type
Praise for Simply Wittgenstein
“Professor Klagge gives us a bird’s eye view of the philosophy of one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. The book intertwines an accessible interpretation of Wittgenstein’s major works with the most relevant events in his life.”
—Mauro Luiz Engelmann, Professor of Philosophy, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil
“There is no one more well-suited to walk us through Wittgenstein’s life and work—together!—than James Klagge, who has shown before how philosophy and biography cohere. In the case of Wittgenstein, where the ideas and the life-story are unique, mesmerizing, and enigmatic, Klagge makes the philosophy not only accessible, but even relevant and applicable to current, real-life issues.”
—Anat Biletzki, author of (Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein, Albert Schweitzer Professor of Philosophy, Quinnipiac University
“This brief introduction to Wittgenstein’s life and work presumes no previous knowledge on the reader’s part. Yet Klagge shares with the reader little-known historical gems about Wittgenstein’s personal and intellectual life. Employing his extensive knowledge of Wittgenstein’s correspondence and other biographical resources, Klagge shows the reader what Wittgenstein was saying and writing to his friends at crucial points while developing his two major works: Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. Klagge’s own views affect how he presents the themes in those works, of course, but even readers who have already formulated views on Wittgenstein are bound to enjoy some of the new angles and biographical anecdotes he presents. Klagge’s engaging, non-combative style and skill with an extensive array of biographical resources are to thank for this little book on Wittgenstein being so accessible and readable.”
—Susan G. Sterrett, Curtis D. Gridley Distinguished Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science, Wichita State University
“James C. Klagge’s new book Simply Wittgenstein offers a concise and accessible overview of Wittgenstein’s central ideas in the two major periods of his philosophical activity. Focusing on Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the posthumous Philosophical Investigations, Klagge explains the motivations, structures, and contents of Wittgenstein’s primary texts. The compact study is simply about without oversimplifying Wittgenstein’s intrinsically complex lifework. Klagge’s study makes an excellent resource for philosophy students and other interested readers to gain competent, authoritative exposure to the essentials of Wittgenstein’s thought.”
—Dale Jacquette, Senior Professorial Chair in Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bern, Switzerland
“Simply Wittgenstein is a lucidly concentrated presentation of the main lines of thought in Wittgenstein’s two major works against the background of Wittgenstein’s equally fascinating biography. Biography is no mere embellishment of philosophy here but is sparingly and sagely employed to illustrate the character and quality of Wittgenstein’s mind. In effect, Klagge whets the reader’s appetite for the original texts rather than merely summarizing their content. As co-editor (with Alfred Nordmann) of the most comprehensive anthologies of Wittgenstein’s philosophical and personal writings in English as well as a teacher of undergraduates for some thirty years, he is superbly qualified for that task. At a number of points, he introduces examples of current dilemmas about questions like what is a presidential election? Or is the idea of God essential to religion that show the relevance of Wittgensteinian ways of thinking to contemporary conceptual conundrums. Throughout, Professor Klagge never loses sight of the sense of silent wonder as the prerequisite of genuine philosophizing that Wittgenstein sought to awaken in his readers.”
—Allan Janik, co-author of Wittgenstein’s Vienna and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna
“A tour de force. Not only does this accessible introduction offer a succinct, yet penetrating, understanding of the relation between Wittgenstein’s earlier and later philosophy—including his evolving thoughts on the nature of language, logic, philosophy, and religion—it treats the reader to a wealth of largely unknown biographical information. Demonstrating how Wittgenstein’s methodology might be brought to bear on philosophical and practical issues of concern today, James Klagge excels as philosopher, scholar and teacher to bring his subject to life. One of the few books I would recommend as a general introduction to the extraordinarily complex ideas of the greatest philosopher of the 20th Century. I learned a lot from it.”
—Dr. Julia Tanney, Philosopher, former Reader in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Kent
Other Great Lives Titles
Simply Austen by Joan Klingel Ray
Simply Beckett by Katherine Weiss
Simply Beethoven by Leon Plantinga
Simply Chaplin by David Sterritt
Simply Chopin by William Smialek
Simply Darwin by Michael Ruse
Simply Descartes by Kurt Smith
Simply Dickens by Paul Schlicke
Simply Dirac by Helge Kragh
Simply Dostoevsky by Gary Saul Morson
Simply Edison by Paul Israel
Simply Eliot by Joseph Maddrey
Simply Euler by Robert E. Bradley
Simply Faulkner by Philip Weinstein
Simply Freud by Stephen Frosh
Simply Gödel by Richard Tieszen
Simply Hegel by Robert Wicks
Simply Heidegger by Mahon O’Brien
Simply Hemingway by Mark P. Ott
Simply Hitchcock by David Sterritt
Simply Joyce by Margot Norris
Simply Machiavelli by Robert Fredona
Simply Napoleon by J. David Markham & Matthew Zarzeczny
Simply Newton by Michael Nauenberg
Simply Riemann by Jeremy Gray
Simply Tolstoy by Donna Tussing Orwin
Simply Twain by R. Kent Rasmussen
Simply Wagner by Thomas S. Grey
Simply Woolf by Mary Ann Caws
Series Editor's Foreword
Simply Charly’s Great Lives Series offers brief, but authoritative, biographies of the world’s most influential people—scientists, artists, writers, economists, and other historical figures whose contributions have had a meaningful and enduring impact
on our society. Each book, presented in an engaging and accessible fashion, offers an illuminating look at their works, ideas, personal lives, and the legacies they left behind.
Our authors are prominent scholars and other top experts who have dedicated their careers to exploring each facet of their subjects’ work and personal lives.
Unlike many other biographies that are simply descriptions of the major milestones in a person’s life, the Great Lives Series goes above and beyond the standard format to include not just the facts, but also fascinating information about the little-known character traits, quirks, strengths and frailties that had shaped these extraordinary individuals’ lives and, consequently, their professional achievements.
Whether shrouded in secrecy, surrounded by myths and misconceptions, or caught up in controversies, the Great Lives Series brings substance, depth, and clarity to the sometimes-complex lives of history’s most powerful and influential people.
What can a reader learn from the Great Lives Series? The books relate how each person’s family, childhood, formative years, and later relationships had influenced their adult lives and career paths. The volumes also shed light on the thought process that led these remarkable people to their groundbreaking discoveries or other achievements, as well as the challenges they had to face and overcome to make history in their respective fields.
We hope that by exploring these biographies, readers will not only gain new knowledge and understanding of what drove these geniuses but also find inspiration for their own lives. Isn’t this what a great book is supposed to do?
Charles Carlini, Simply Charly
New York City
Acknowledgements
The approach of this book comes from teaching Wittgenstein’s work for over 30 years. I am grateful to the hundreds of students who cared about Wittgenstein enough to take the classes, read his books, and test his views. While writing this book, though, I was most inspired by my young grandson Kent, for his wonder at the world and persistence in engaging with it.
Preface
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was born in Vienna into a family of enormous wealth and culture. Since Wittgenstein and his family spoke German, they would have pronounced “w” like a “v,” “st” like “sht,” and “ei” like a long “i”—Lud-vig Vit-gun-shteyen. But I have heard some German-speaking scholars pronounce the name using British pronunciation—Wit-gun-steen. So it probably does not matter very much how you pronounce it, as long as you choose one way and stick to it.
Ludwig’s father, Karl Wittgenstein, was a businessman and industrialist, comparable in wealth and influence to the Krupps in Germany and Andrew Carnegie in the United States. One critic of Karl’s aggressive business style remarked that “the Vienna Stock Exchange stands in fear of God, Taussig [a trade economist], Wittgenstein and nothing else in the world.” The father’s forceful style and influence extended to his family as well. Three of Ludwig’s brothers committed suicide—two of them likely due to the unrelenting pressure and expectations of their father.
The youngest of eight children, Ludwig managed to avoid some of the pressure from his father and choose his own career, but he retained Karl’s business-like purpose. He told his friend, Con Drury, in 1930: “My father was a businessman and I am a businessman: I want my philosophy to be businesslike, to get something done, to get something accomplished.” In 1940, he began discussing a presentation by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, with these words: “Let’s talk business with each other. Ordinary business….” Ludwig was impatient with the abstractions and theories of other philosophers.
Karl was also a patron of the arts, receiving frequent visits from the composers Gustav Mahler and Johannes Brahms, and commissioning a wedding portrait of his daughter Gretl by Gustav Klimt. He was married to Leopoldine Kalmus, a meek and devoted woman who played piano excellently and inspired her children with a love of music. Ludwig once bragged that there were seven grand pianos in his father’s house. Two of the sons aspired to careers in music, but Ludwig seems only to have mastered whistling, often performing whole movements of symphonies, either solo or with piano accompaniment. Near the end of his life, Ludwig told Drury: “It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?”
Despite these important resemblances, Ludwig also strove to separate himself from his origins. For his university studies, he left Austria for Germany, and then eventually for England. After his father died in 1913, Ludwig took legal steps to ensure that he would inherit none of the family wealth. And for the time that remained of his mother’s life, until 1926, he avoided Vienna and family as much as he could.
While Karl stood for progress in all of its cultural, economic and technological manifestations, Ludwig used as the epigraph for his second book a line from the Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy: “The trouble about progress is that it always looks much greater than it really is.”
In one way, Wittgenstein did “get something done.” At his death, he left behind some 20,000 pages of writings, he had lectured over a period of 17 years in some four dozen classes, he had fought in a world war, and he had designed and built a large house in Vienna. But, of those 20,000 pages, fewer than 100 were published in his lifetime. His students were few. And he fought on the losing side of a war that would largely destroy the culture in which he was raised. By all rights, he should have disappeared from history.
Yet, Wittgenstein is widely considered to be the most important philosopher of the 20th century. The popular “Leiter Reports” philosophy blog did three polls in 2009. In answer to “Who is the most important philosopher of the past 200 years?” 600 respondents voted Wittgenstein number one (LP1). He easily beat out better-known names such as John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx, as well as other 20th-century competitors such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. In a poll selecting “The 20 ‘Most Important’ Philosophers of the Modern Era [roughly, the last 400 years],” nearly 750 respondents voted him number four, trailing only Immanuel Kant, David Hume and René Descartes (LP2). And in a competition for “The 20 ‘Most Important’ Philosophers of All Time,” nearly 900 respondents placed Wittgenstein in 7th place. He was beaten by Plato, Aristotle and Socrates (LP3)—not bad company.
But if you know little about Wittgenstein and his work, this book is your chance to learn more.
There are three main reasons for the high regard in which Wittgenstein is held:
Firstly, he emphasized the importance of language to philosophy. This attention to language was not altogether new, but it was sustained. At first, he took the language of science to be a model, but later he came to see the value of the wide range of uses of language from everyday life. His initial orientation toward scientific language influenced a movement called “Logical Positivism,” which took science as a model for philosophy. But his later appreciation of the wide range of uses of language influenced a reaction against Logical Positivism. It seemed that everyone could find in Wittgenstein’s work something to like and something to dislike.
Secondly, he maintained that philosophy is not a set of doctrines, but a method to help avoid confusions of thought. This view set him apart from his predecessors and contemporaries. While they were trying to create a philosophy, Wittgenstein was trying to do philosophy. In this respect, he was like Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher. Some philosophers might see progress in the creation of a large theoretical system of thought. Wittgenstein sought progress only in curing confusions. It’s progress, but not as great as it might seem.
Lastly, he insisted on the importance of context for understanding. Philosophers may have the popular reputation of navel-gazing, as though we might figure out something just by thinking about it, and it alone, hard enough. But Wittgenstein took a wider view. To him, words were part of sentences, sentences part of language, and languages part of communities. One of Wittgenstein’s students recalled that “it didn’t matter what subject ma
tter Wittgenstein discussed. What was important was the method he brought to bear on the subject, which was always the same. He always emphasized the importance of the context for understanding things—when we ignore the context, what remains is flawed” (PPO, p. 356).
Wittgenstein’s writings create a certain fascination among readers or would-be readers. The one book that he published in his lifetime, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP), was cryptic, oracular, and obscure; thus, it seems profound even if it is not understood. A second book, the Philosophical Investigations (PI), which was published shortly after his death, was more extensive and wide-ranging, but without a clear point. It could be, and was, put to a wide range of uses, both inside philosophy and outside. Figures as diverse as Stanley Hauerwas in theology, Marjorie Perloff in literary criticism, Steve Reich in music composition, and the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, have drawn on Wittgenstein’s work for guidance or inspiration.
But as important as Wittgenstein is taken to be, I have not met a person who has tried to read either of his two great books and come away without a feeling of deep frustration. This is especially true of readers with little background in philosophy, but it is even true of those with a good deal of background and experience in philosophy. Invariably, the problem is that the context is missing.
It is most common to put the book down after several pages and wonder what Wittgenstein could be talking about. Unfortunately, he gives us almost no guidance, and it is difficult to guess for ourselves. So, it is best to read the books in the company of a guide. That is the purpose of Simply Wittgenstein. Once you get to know him and get a sense of what he is talking about and why, once you see how his comments raise or contribute to issues of larger interest, you will agree that reading Wittgenstein is well worth the effort.
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