Talk:Ludwig Wittgenstein

I think it should probably be written about how Wittgenstein affects everyday life today, what practical meaning his efforts have.

Any computer programming language that you create programs with is based on Wittgenstein's logic but also the structure that you have to understand. A logic where e.g. if A applies then B does not apply e.g. in statements like if(), for() and while().

I also see it as, for example, a storyboard for a film or book that we are working on today, could not have been like that without Wittgenstein.

The whole of modern linguistics has made enormous progress in the last 100 years with the help of Wittgenstein.

However, one area that could be renewed and revolutionized through the application of Wittgenstein's efforts is law, where there is a fundamental problem and that is the understanding of legislation and what meaning it has and how it could logically be constructed so that it is not communicating not just for the lawyers but also, government officials, individuals and not least politicians.

The second reason for rewriting the entire statute book is the last 50 years of advances in information technology where modern web-based means can create a much more accessible legislation. But also which is integrated in e.g. computer-supported processing systems in the exercise of authority in state and municipality.

I perceive it as the legal profession seeing their jobs threatened by changes. Which is a major safety risk to the public. Zzalpha (talk) 23:01, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

"She was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on her maternal side"

Was the line about Wittgenstein's Catholic grandma supposed to read "She was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on his maternal side"? A nephew is a relative through one's sibling, which makes "maternal side" a senseless modifier. HermannusAlemannus (talk) 10:30, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

We should archive this topic, since that text is no longer in the article. Jtbwikiman (talk) 21:07, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Hertz and Bildtheorie

I have two questions:

• How do you translate "picture theory" as in picture theory of language? what is the actual German word used here (Bildtheorie)? Was "Bildtheorie" ever used by Wittgenstein?
• Why is there no mention of Heinrich Hertz in this article or the picture theory one? Apparently Wittgenstein was inspired by him.

Philosophy is not my field but I can help find sources if that is what is missing. ReyHahn (talk) 19:36, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I just noticed that question two is answered by the infobox under "influences". However the question now goes into why some of those names are not named in this article or in any of the articles related to his work.--ReyHahn (talk) 09:46, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Religion

Why does the Wittgenstein article link to various categories of Judaism articles but no category of Catholic articles? Asking as an atheist who has noticed Wittgenstein practicing Franciscan virtues in his visitations to the sick and lonely in Irish nursing and old age homes, and on other occasions in his biography. Pascalulu88 (talk) 01:27, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

He was Jewish by ancestry, to the tune of three out of four grandparents. He was baptised and brought up as a Roman Catholic but did not practise Roman Catholicism as an adult, though he did retain a slightly weird interest in the idea of 'confession'. He and his family always said they were Jewish, and their paternal family name was in fact Meyer, 'Wittgenstein' being adopted by their great-grandfather after his employers, the princely Sayn-Wittgenstein family (which would go on to produce a famous Nazi night-fighter ace pilot, Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, shot down and killed by an RAF air gunner in 1944). Since 1945, Jewishness has been largely defined by ancestry -- in effect according to whether the Nazis would have considered you Jewish (and marked you for death) or not. Up to 1933, German and Austrian Jews often believed they could stop being Jewish by practising Christianity, but, when the Gestapo came to call, they found out that this was not the case and they were required to carry Jewish identity documents. Which has influenced both Jewish and non-Jewish thinking on the matter. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:21, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not questioning his Jewish connections. Just mentioning that he was technically Catholic and from reading accounts of his conversations with his Irish friends, esp. Maurice O'Connor Drury, it's obvious that he did think seriously about Christianity. He stated his preference for Matthew's Gospel over the others and had problems with John's Gospel because of its inconsistencies with the other three but he concluded that his difficulty with this Gospel was "as nothing" because "if you can accept the miracle that God became man...it is impossible for me to say what form the record of such an event should take." And also, "When I was a prisoner of war in Italy, I was very glad when we were compelled to attend Mass." He was undecided about it and satisfied to remain undecided.

I'm completely agnostic but I think that Christianity has become increasingly marginalized as a topic to be taken seriously by Western White intellectuals but Wikipedia is not obliged to ignore certain historically important belief systems simply because they're unfashionable. Wittgenstein did not disparage it and I don't think it would do any harm to add "Low-importance Catholic articles" to his already long list of categories. Pascalulu88 (talk) 20:20, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Plans to move to Soviet Union

It's not mentioned anywhere on the article from what I can see, though it is mentioned on Francis Skinner's wikipedia article. Should be worth adding to this one. Aristaeusapiculturist (talk) 22:16, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

The claim at Francis Skinner is unsourced. What does Monk (1990) say about this? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:44, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

to Kernes. 30.06.35 , LW: “I have now more or less decided to go to Russia as a Tourist in September and see whether it is possible for me to get a suitable job there” - McGuinness, Brian (2012). Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911 - 1951. 978-1-4443-5089-0. p.244

"In 1934, Wittgenstein disclosed to Drury that he and Skinner had formed a plan of going to live and work in Russia... Wittgenstein's friends were unclear what he and Skinner proposed to do in Russia: Ray Monk comments: 'The impression they received was that Wittgenstein wanted "to abandon philosophy" and "settle in Russia as a manual worker, or possibly to take up medicine'. According to Monk, this latter was an option Wittgenstein had long considered to the extent of securing a commitment to support him financially in the venture from Keynes (see: Monk, pp. 347 and 350). ... Wittgenstein visited Russia on his own in September 1935; Skinner was too ill to travel" Hayes, John (2018) The Selected Writings of Maurice O’Connor Drury: On Wittgenstein, Philosophy, Religion and Psychiatry. 978-1-350-09154-2. p.21 Jy Houston (talk) 05:32, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks for the clarification, Jy Houston. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:09, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

"Several times in the course of his life Wittgenstein expressed the wish to live in Russia. Those who knew him never had a clear idea of what his motives might be, Fania Pascal thought that possibly it was a desire to escape from Western civilisation. She surmised that ‘his feeling for Russia would have had at all times more to do with Tolstoy’s moral teachings, with Dostoevsky’s spiritual insights, than with any political or social matters.’ Also, the hardship of life in Russia in the 1930s ‘might have appealed to Wittgenstein’s ascetic nature’. Rush Rhees thinks that Wittgenstein might have wanted to practise medicine in the newly colonised areas on the periphery of the USSR, where life would be primitive. He also says that Wittgenstein was strongly sympathetic with the emphasis that the Russian regime at that time placed on ‘manual labour’. [...] Wittgenstein visited Russia in the summer of 1935, and then returned to teaching and writing in Cambridge. He did not speak to Rhees, or apparently to others, of the impressions he had received. And he was not a person to whom one would say, ‘Well, Wittgenstein, what did you think of Russia?’"

[Fania Pascal, taught LW and Skinner Russian in the 1930's]

Malcolm, Norman (1981). "Wittgenstein's Confessions". London Review of Books. Vol.03, no.21 [a review of Rush Rhees (ed.), Ludwig Wittgenstein. Personal Recollections (1981)]

-not that I think you need more verification as such, just was reading it and found it interesting, all best, Jy Jy Houston (talk) 21:43, 14 October 2024 (UTC)