cover of episode James Klagge on Wittgenstein

James Klagge on Wittgenstein

2024/2/19
logo of podcast Philosophy Bites

Philosophy Bites

AI Deep Dive AI Insights AI Chapters Transcript
People
J
James Klagge
Topics
James Klagge: 维特根斯坦来自维也纳一个富有的家庭,他的家庭既富有又注重文化,这对他的人生和哲学思想都产生了影响。他的工程和数学背景使他转向逻辑学,最终进入哲学领域。他的父亲非常专制,他的两个哥哥可能因为父亲的压力而自杀。维特根斯坦的性格严肃认真,可能难以相处,他的言谈举止给人留下深刻印象。 《逻辑哲学论》的项目源于维特根斯坦的工程背景,试图通过模型来理解语言如何表达世界。他提出了一种“图像理论”来解释意义,认为句子是现实的图像或表征。他试图通过分析现实和语言的最小单元,来展示两者在最基本层面的联系。 伯特兰·罗素和《数学原理》对维特根斯坦及其著作《逻辑哲学论》产生了重要影响。维特根斯坦认为逻辑不描述世界,而是揭示世界的结构。《逻辑哲学论》的结构和风格与维特根斯坦在第一次世界大战期间写作的背景有关,其编号系统源于《数学原理》,方便在写作过程中插入新的命题。维特根斯坦的写作风格受到歌德、叔本华等人的影响,注重简洁和警句式的表达,他非常重视其思想的表达形式。 维特根斯坦自愿参加第一次世界大战,并在战争中担任炮兵观测员。第一次世界大战的经历深刻地影响了维特根斯坦的思想,使他开始思考上帝、死亡、人生意义等问题。第一次世界大战的经历塑造了《逻辑哲学论》的最后部分,使他的哲学能够包容所有经验。维特根斯坦认为关于伦理、宗教等方面的语言并非陈述真假,而是表达情感和态度。他并非认为伦理讨论毫无意义,而是认为谈论伦理、宗教等重要议题的方式不当。他对伦理和宗教的严肃态度与维也纳学派的观点形成鲜明对比。 《逻辑哲学论》出版过程曲折,最终由罗素和他的助手帮助出版。维也纳学派对《逻辑哲学论》的前一部分表示赞赏,但对后一部分特别是关于伦理和宗教的观点持否定态度。《逻辑哲学论》的早期评论褒贬不一,一些评论家表示赞赏,一些评论家表示困惑,还有一些评论家持否定态度。罗素虽然为《逻辑哲学论》撰写了序言,但他并不完全理解维特根斯坦的思想。维特根斯坦的作品,特别是《逻辑哲学论》,被认为是20世纪最重要的哲学著作之一,对分析哲学产生了深远的影响。 《逻辑哲学论》中的一些命题直接反映了维特根斯坦在战争中的经历,例如他对个人意志与世界独立性的认识。维特根斯坦认为,即使无法控制外部环境,也能控制自己的思想和态度。维特根斯坦对永恒生命的理解并非无限的持续时间,而是时间的永恒。托尔斯泰的《福音书概要》对维特根斯坦的思想产生了影响。

Deep Dive

Key Insights

What was Ludwig Wittgenstein's family background and how did it influence his early life?

Wittgenstein grew up in one of the wealthiest families in Vienna, comparable to the Krupps in Germany or the Carnegies in the United States. His father was a domineering manufacturing businessman who pressured his older brothers into the family business, leading to their suicides. Wittgenstein, the youngest, was allowed to study engineering instead, which eventually led him to philosophy through his interest in logic.

How did Wittgenstein's experiences in World War I shape the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus?

Wittgenstein's experiences in World War I profoundly influenced the final sections of the Tractatus. While serving as an artillery spotter during the Russian Brusilov offensive, he began contemplating themes like God, death, ethics, and the meaning of life. These reflections are reflected in the last two dozen propositions of the book, which address existential and ethical questions, contrasting with the earlier focus on logic and language.

What is Wittgenstein's 'picture theory of meaning' in the Tractatus?

Wittgenstein's 'picture theory of meaning' posits that language represents reality by sharing its structure or form. Just as a model in engineering represents a real object, sentences or pictures represent parts of reality. This theory focuses on how language describes the world by breaking down both language and reality into their minimal components and showing their connection.

How did Wittgenstein's engineering background influence his philosophy?

Wittgenstein's background in engineering, particularly his work on aeronautical engineering and patents for propellers, led him to an interest in logic and models. This influenced his philosophical approach, especially his 'picture theory of meaning,' where he used the concept of models to explain how language represents reality.

What was Wittgenstein's relationship with Bertrand Russell and how did it impact his work?

Wittgenstein met Bertrand Russell at Cambridge, where Russell was a significant influence on his philosophical development. Russell's work on logic, particularly in Principia Mathematica, provided the context for Wittgenstein's early philosophical inquiries. However, Wittgenstein later diverged from Russell's views, especially in his conception of logic as showing rather than describing the structure of the world.

How did Wittgenstein's character and personality influence his philosophical work?

Wittgenstein was described as serious, noble, and childlike in his capacity for pleasure, but also cold and hard to get along with. His intense focus and seriousness, possibly linked to traits associated with Asperger's syndrome, shaped his rigorous and aphoristic writing style. He cared deeply about the form and clarity of his ideas, which is evident in the Tractatus.

What was the Vienna Circle's interpretation of the Tractatus, and how did it differ from Wittgenstein's intentions?

The Vienna Circle, a group of scientifically oriented philosophers, embraced the first 80% of the Tractatus, which focused on logic and language. However, they dismissed the final sections on ethics, religion, and existential themes, which Wittgenstein considered crucial. Wittgenstein valued these topics deeply and believed they should be approached with silence rather than superficial discussion.

How did Wittgenstein's wartime experiences influence his thoughts on ethics and the will?

During World War I, Wittgenstein realized that while he couldn't control external events, he could control his attitude toward them. This insight is reflected in propositions like 6.43, where he states that the world of the happy man differs from that of the unhappy man. He also explored the idea of eternal life as timelessness, influenced by Tolstoy's 'The Gospels in Brief,' which he carried with him during the war.

What is the significance of the numbering system in the Tractatus?

The numbering system in the Tractatus, inspired by Principia Mathematica, allowed Wittgenstein to organize and insert propositions flexibly. This system was particularly useful as he wrote the book during World War I, using notebooks in the trenches. The structure reflects his method of distilling and reorganizing ideas over time.

How was the Tractatus received in the UK and America after its publication?

The Tractatus received mixed reviews upon its publication. The first review, by H. Wilden Carr in the Times Literary Supplement, was highly positive. Other reviews ranged from puzzled to negative. Bertrand Russell, who wrote the introduction, regarded it as a work of genius but did not fully understand it, a sentiment Wittgenstein shared about most readers.

Chapters
This chapter explores Wittgenstein's privileged upbringing in Vienna, his family background, and his transition from engineering and mathematics to philosophy. It also introduces his unique personality and character, as described by his contemporaries.
  • Wittgenstein's wealthy and cultural Viennese background
  • His family's influence and the suicides of his brothers
  • His early interest in engineering and mathematics
  • His unique personality and mannerisms as described by his peers

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

This is Philosophy Bites with me, David Edmonds. And me, Nigel Warburton. If you enjoy Philosophy Bites, please support us. We're unfunded and all donations will be gratefully received. For more details, go to www.philosophybites.com. Ludwig Wittgenstein is a philosopher whose ideas and way of expressing them are genuinely illuminated by a fuller understanding of his life and the historical context in which he was writing.

James Clarke has devoted many years to explaining the relationship between Wittgenstein the man, his times and his philosophy.

This episode is part of our mini-series, BioBytes, which focuses on the lives of philosophers. Jim Klager, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thank you. I'm always happy to have a chance to talk about Wittgenstein. We're talking today about, as you say, Wittgenstein and the only book, I should say the only philosophy book, that he published in his lifetime, which is the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But perhaps you can begin by telling us a little bit about Wittgenstein's background.

Well, he grew up in one of the richest families in Vienna. His father was a manufacturing businessman, comparable to the Krupps in Germany or the Carnegies in the United States. Although on the other hand, the family was very cultural. They knew Brahms, Mahler. Klimt painted a wedding portrait for one of Ludwig's sisters. So they're a funny combination of things. He went on to study engineering.

and then aeronautical engineering, where he patented a kind of propeller. His interest in engineering and then math led him to an interest in logic, and that's sort of what brought him into philosophy.

So he goes from the University of Manchester to Cambridge, and that's where he meets Bertrand Russell. In fact, he had first probably talked to Gottlob Frege, a German logician who maybe steered him to Cambridge and Russell. But both Russell and Frege were very important in his background. You mentioned that he's from a very wealthy background. His father was famously domineering.

Yeah, he had two older brothers who I think the father wanted to go into business following him. Both of them committed suicide, perhaps because of the emotional pressure. So Wittgenstein Ludwig was the youngest in the family and maybe his father had lightened up a little bit by then, but allowed him to study engineering instead of going into the family business.

Can you say something about his character? Was he warm, cold? Was he likable, unpleasant? Tell us about Wittgenstein the man. What sort of character was he? Since we're talking about the Tractatus, which he wrote during World War I, I was going to quote two people who knew him right during the war and

that he met in the prisoner of war camp after the war. One of them, Franz Peric said, "The really striking thing about him was his manner of speaking. It conveyed an extraordinary definiteness. There was a characteristic movement of the head. Usually it was bowed, but from time to time he would throw it back and direct his gaze into the distance."

And then his other friend Ludwig Hensel said, "I have made the acquaintance of a young logician whose intellectual significance surpasses that of any man I have met until now, serious of noble naturalness, nervous with a childlike capacity to take pleasure in things." So he definitely struck people with his character. It's sometimes suggested that he was maybe on the spectrum, maybe it was something like Asperger's syndrome.

So yeah, he was extremely serious, maybe hard to get along with, cold maybe. And before we get to the story of the Tractatus itself, and this may be an unreasonable request, but can you give us a quick summary of the book? What was the project? What was he trying to achieve?

The project, I think, grew out of his background in engineering. In engineering, they make scale models of things in reality to test them out. And I think that idea really struck Wittgenstein. You might say that the main project that he had, at least to start with in the Trachtat, is to figure out how language could be about the world. For that, he used models as a way of thinking about this, that models represent parts of reality, just like sentences.

represent parts of reality or pictures represent parts of reality. And so he sometimes said to have a picture theory of meaning. And so he sort of focuses on those aspects of language that describe the world.

But then that leaves a lot of other bits of language unaccounted for. And so the first project then leads to other side projects. What is logic like? What are we going to say about ethics? Things like that. By picture theory of meaning, you mean that

a sentence somehow is an image, a picture, a representation of reality? Well, he thinks that a representation has to share a form with whatever it is that it represents or a structure. And so he thinks that language is structured

in a way comparable to how reality is structured and so he's interested in analyzing reality down to its minimal bits and language down to its minimal bits and showing how there's a connection at that most basic level and then how language and reality can be built up from that most basic level

The book wasn't written in a vacuum. What individuals influenced Wittgenstein and the book? We've already mentioned Bertrand Russell. I guess I'm principally thinking about Russell here.

Well, as I said, his engineering background was really important. And so Boltzmann and Hertz were both German physicists whose ideas about models, for example, influenced Wittgenstein. But when he came to the philosophy part, it was certainly Bertram Russell, I guess, that was the most influential. Russell, along with Alfred North Whitehead, had published Principia Mathematica, which was a three-volume

account of the nature of logic. And Russell had finished that when Wittgenstein came to Cambridge in 1911 to work with Russell. Russell had finished Principia Mathematica, and he was now trying to figure out how this might apply to various philosophical issues. And that really is the context in which Wittgenstein started on his project, kind of picking up the issues that Russell was interested in.

coming up with an account of the nature of logic also, which led to some differences between him and Russell. And what's Wittgenstein's conception of logic?

Well, the kind of language he was focusing on is about the world. Logic, on the other hand, doesn't fit that model. For him, logic tells us something about the structure of the world, but it doesn't describe the world. It, you might say, shows the structure of the world. And so while the sort of language that Fickenschein focuses on mostly says things about the world or describes the world, logic does something different. It shows the structure of the world, he thought.

The style of the book is very unique, isn't it? In the numbered system it deploys. Tell us a bit about that. Well, to understand why it has the structure and style it does, you have to realize that he was writing it during the First World War, while he was in the trenches, so to speak. And he was working from notebooks that he kept with him.

And over time, he would try and distill some of the ideas from the notebooks down into a sort of organized form. To do that, he couldn't really cut and paste the way you might ordinarily in your office, especially with the computer. But even literally, he couldn't cut and paste. All he had with him was some notebooks and pens. The numbering system comes from Principia Mathematica. Bertrand Russell tells a story that the reason they numbered the

proofs the way they did in Principia Mathematica was because it would allow them to insert other proofs in between without having to renumber the whole thing. In fact, Russell said that as he was constructing Principia Mathematica, he kept a file of proofs. And if he came up with a new one, he would put it literally between other ones. So the numbering system allowed an organization that

would allow you to insert things as you go along. And that's really what Wittgenstein was doing in constructing the Tractatus. He was coming up with a bunch of propositions and trying to figure out how to organize them and reorganize them. And I think that accounts for the numbering system.

On the other hand, there's also the question of style. This is written in very short sentences. Wittgenstein was impressed by writers who had an aphoristic style. People like Goethe, Schopenhauer, Lichtenberg.

Krauss, all of these were authors that Wittgenstein was interested in, who at least sometimes wrote in aphoristic form. And that approach really interested Wittgenstein. He said one time to a friend in the prisoner of war camp, "The language is everything."

And I think the suggestion is that he cared as much about the form that his ideas were presented in as he did about the content of those ideas. Is that because he had a poetic or novelist sensibility? I don't know if I want to go that far and say he had a novelist or poetic sensibility, but he did have a desire to write well.

So he was not writing this at his desk in his study at home. He wasn't writing this in a library. He was writing this during World War I and he was fighting on the Austro-Hungarian side. Set the scene.

Yes. Well, he volunteered to fight in the war. He could have gotten out of it because he had a medical deferment with a hernia. He could have gotten out of it or gotten a better assignment because of his family's wealth. But in fact, he volunteered. He said that it was a kind of trial by fire of his soul. He was assigned to work in the artillery.

In that sense, he wasn't really on the front lines all the time, but he always wanted to be on the front lines. And he, in fact, volunteered a couple of times to switch the infantry, but they wouldn't let him because he was so useful with the artillery. But eventually he was assigned to be an artillery spotter. This came in the spring of 1916 and put him right in the way of the Russian Brusilov offensive.

This happened in June and July of 1916 and really had quite an effect on Wittgenstein. Whereas he had been thinking about logic and the nature of language and things like that, he now began thinking about God and death and the meaning of life and the will and good and evil. All these things we know because of his keeping a private notebook in addition to his philosophical notebook.

He wrote it in reverse alphabet code. So we know a lot about what he was doing and thinking while he was fighting. So he's beginning to think about life, death, God, ethics because of what he's going through. Does that shape the text in any way?

Very much so, it shapes, I would say, the last two dozen propositions in the Tractatus. Yes. In a way, if he hadn't fought in World War I, the Tractatus would have been pretty similar to what it is up to about the last two dozen propositions. But his experience in World War I was so profound that he felt like his philosophy needed to encompass all of his experiences.

not just the thoughts that he had had from his engineering background and working with Russell and so forth, but now he has all these other experiences and he feels that his book needs to encompass all of them. He had previously used the distinction between saying and showing to help explain how logic operates, because logic doesn't say anything, rather it shows certain kinds of structures. And this notion of showing then Wittgenstein used

to come up with a way to understand his experiences about God and aesthetics and ethics and death and so forth. He now felt like the language that we use to talk about these things aren't saying things that might be true or false, but rather they're showing something about our feelings, about our attitude. That's interesting because there were some people who interpreted the Tractatus to be saying that discussion of ethics

ethics is meaningless and so unimportant, but that's not what Wittgenstein meant. Right. He thought that ethics and God and religion were among the most important things, and he thought that they were demeaned by talking about them. In fact, I think the background in Vienna at that time struck Wittgenstein as a bunch of people babbling or, as we might say now, paying lip service to

ethical issues or religion or something like that without any seriousness behind it. He was extremely serious about these kinds of things and thought that the best way to respect them was to be silent about them. And so his philosophy sort of makes that silence appropriate. Can you just contrast that approach with the logical positivists of Vienna who come after Wittgenstein and after the Tractatus?

So Wittgenstein had trouble getting the Tractatus published for obvious reasons, if you're familiar with it. And he finally gave up in disgust and trained to become an elementary school teacher and began to teach elementary school in rural Austria. And he left it to Bertrand Russell, who then left it to his assistant, Dorothy Rinsch, to get the thing published. And it did get published finally in the spring of 1922.

and then published in English translation also in the fall of 1922, it came to the attention of members of the Vienna Circle. And they studied it pretty carefully pretty soon. And they wanted to try and get in touch with Wittgenstein and have him talk to them about it.

And he played kind of hard to get, and they really didn't get an opportunity to meet with him until about 1927. But the Vienna Circle was a scientifically oriented group of philosophers. They were interested in, you might say, the hard facts. And so the first 80% of the Tractatus was right up their alley. They liked what they were hearing and they wanted to hear more. When they got to the end of the Tractatus, I think they just sort of

shut down or averted their gaze or something like that. Anyway, as you say, they took things other than scientific things to be problematic. They had a view of ethics and religion and so forth as not measuring up to the standards of good science or good mathematics. And so they had a dismissive attitude about these issues.

whereas Wittgenstein valued them greatly. So on the few occasions when they did meet, I think Wittgenstein felt like he wasn't connecting with them at all. And so there's a story that they could hardly ever get him to talk about the Tractatus. And on occasion, he would even come and read poetry to them

Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, was one of the things he chose to read. And he would, in fact, turn his back to them while he was reading this. And so, yes, I think this sort of difference between the two was difficult for both sides. That's how the Vienna Circle interpreted it. It's obviously the Tractatus, a quite gnomic text. It's notoriously tricky to understand.

How did it go down elsewhere? How was it received in the UK and in America, for example? The first published review of the Tractatus was done by H. Wilden Carr, who wrote a review for the Times Literary Supplement in December of 1922. And Carr had an extremely positive review. Carr, in fact, had...

arranged a series of lectures in 1918 that Bertrand Russell gave, later published as The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. And I think reading those lectures by Russell, eight lectures on The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, is a great preparation for studying the Tractatus. There are, as far as I know, 17 published reviews of the Tractatus, and some of them are quite positive, a few are quite negative, and a number of them are puzzled. And Bertrand Russell himself, he writes...

an introduction to the Tractatus and obviously regards it as a work of genius but does he fully understand it?

No, and Wittgenstein in fact felt like he didn't really want Russell's introduction to be included at all. Russell came up with the idea as a way of helping Wittgenstein to get the thing published because Russell was known and Wittgenstein wasn't known. I think there's a lot of value in Russell's introduction, but there are ways in which he doesn't appreciate Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was kind of picky about who understood him or not. He thought for the most part nobody did.

A century on, what's its reputation now? That's a good question. I have to answer the larger question, how is Wittgenstein regarded now? Because he had not only published the Tractatus in 1922, but also after his death in 1951, his later thoughts were collected as the Philosophical Investigations published in 1953. And

I think analytic philosophers especially consider Wittgenstein's work to be among the most important work of the 20th century. But there's a different question. How influential is Wittgenstein's work now among analytic philosophers? And it doesn't have that same central role. The Trach taught us maybe more so than the philosophical investigations because of its technical aspects.

You've spent a few years now undertaking a very close contextual analysis of the Tractatus and mapping the philosophy alongside Wittgenstein's life. What's the most surprising thing you've learnt?

Okay, so I've mentioned that the last two dozen propositions of the Tractatus really came to life because of his experiences in the war. So let me say a little bit about three of those propositions. One of them is 6.373, where he says, "The world is independent of my will." And if you hear that line, you think, "What? Can't you decide to scratch your nose?" And then you scratch your nose. Where is that coming from? And it's coming from his experience in the war.

where he is feeling completely unable to control what happens to him. Live or die, it has nothing to do with what he might do. It just happens to be whether a bomb lands near him or not. And he has similar thoughts

that although he can't control what happens to him, he can control how he thinks about his situation. And so proposition 6.43, he says, "If the good or bad exercise the will does alter the world, it can alter it only the limits of the world and not the facts.

The world of the happy man is a different one from the world of the unhappy man. And so he thinks about how it is that he can be happy even in the circumstances that he's in, that he can't control in other respects. He can control his attitudes even if he can't control what happens to him.

And then he also thinks about death and whether there is life after death. And we ordinarily think about that in terms of living on forever. But he says at 6.4311, if we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

And Wittgenstein actually got that from Tolstoy and a little book by Tolstoy called The Gospels in Brief, which Wittgenstein found during the war, carried with him and read very carefully. And again, we know this because of the private notebook. So I think there are very direct connections between the experiences that he's having in battle and how he tries to deal with that and what comes out in the Tractatus.

Jim Clagher, thank you very much indeed. And thank you. For more Philosophy Bites, go to www.philosophybites.com. You can also find details there of Philosophy Bites books and how to support us.