Ludwig Wittgenstein facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Ludwig Wittgenstein
Portrait of Wittgenstein on being awarded a scholarship from Trinity College, Cambridge, 1929
Born	Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (1889-04-26)26 April 1889 Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died	29 April 1951(1951-04-29) (aged 62) Cambridge, England
Nationality	Austrian
Education	Technische Hochschule (Diploma) Victoria University of Manchester (PhD, not completed) Trinity College, Cambridge (PhD)
Notable work	Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Philosophical Investigations

Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy Linguistic turn Logical atomism Logical behaviorism Correspondence theory of truth
Institutions	Trinity College, Cambridge
Main interests	Logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of mind, epistemology
Notable ideas	Picture theory of language Truth functions States of affairs Logical necessity Use theory of meaning Language-games Private language argument Family resemblance Rule following Forms of life Wittgensteinian fideism Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics Ordinary language philosophy Ideal language analysis Wittgenstein's ladder Quietism Seeing-as Depth and Surface grammar
Influences Gottlob Frege, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, G. E. Moore, Frank P. Ramsey, Oswald Spengler, Ludwig Boltzmann, William James, Karl Kraus, Augustine of Hippo, Adolf Loos, Piero Sraffa, Otto Weininger, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Schopenhauer, Baruch Spinoza, Leo Tolstoy, L. E. J. Brouwer, Heinrich Hertz, Hermann von Helmholtz
Influenced Alvin Plantinga, Rogers Albritton, Bertrand Russell, Norman Malcolm, G. E. Moore, Frank P. Ramsey, Vienna Circle, Rudolf Carnap, Alan Turing, G. E. M. Anscombe, Peter Geach, Barry Stroud, Crispin Wright, John McDowell, Duncan Pritchard, Daniel Dennett, Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, James F. Conant, Jürgen Habermas, Gilbert Ryle, Saul Kripke, John Searle, Hans Sluga, Peter Hacker, Ian Hacking, Stephen Toulmin, Quentin Skinner, Paul Feyerabend, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Jules Vuillemin, Jacques Bouveresse, Reuben Goodstein, Casimir Lewy, Thomas Kuhn

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( in German) (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher. He worked mainly in the basics of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century.

Before his death at the age of 62, the only book Wittgenstein had published was the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His second book Philosophical Investigations was published shortly after he died. Both of these works are regarded as very important for analytic philosophy.

Life
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Life

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889, to Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein. He was the youngest of eight children and was born into one of the most prominent and wealthy families in the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father's parents, Hermann Christian and Fanny Wittgenstein, were born into Jewish families but later converted to Protestantism, and after they moved from Saxony to Vienna in the 1850s, assimilated themselves into the Viennese Protestant professional classes. Ludwig's father, Karl Wittgenstein, became an industrialist and went on to make a fortune in iron and steel. Ludwig's mother Leopoldine, born Kalmus, was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich von Hayek. Despite Karl's Protestantism, and the fact that Leopoldine's father was Jewish, the Wittgenstein children were baptized as Roman Catholics — the faith of their maternal grandmother — and Ludwig was given a Roman Catholic burial upon his death. Wittgenstein was homosexual.

Wittgenstein began studying mechanical engineering. During his research he became interested in the foundations of mathematics, particularly after reading Bertrand Russell's Principles of Mathematics and Gottlob Frege's Grundgesetze. In 1911 Wittgenstein visited Frege and Russell and discussed philosophy with them at great length. He made a great impression on Russell and started to work on the foundations of logic and mathematical logic. Russell saw Wittgenstein as a successor who would carry on his work.

The Tractatus

Hochreit 1920. Wittgenstein is seated between his sister Helene Salzer and his friend, Arvid Sjögren.

During the First World War, Wittgenstein served in the army and developed his logic. He included ethical aspects. In the summer of 1918 he learned that his friend David Pinsent had been killed in an airplane accident. Wittgenstein became depressed. He went to stay with his uncle Paul where he was able to complete the Tractatus. No publisher accepted it, but Russell realised it was a philosophically important work and wrote an introduction. Wittgenstein did not like it because he thought that Russell had not understood the book. In the end Wilhelm Ostwald's journal Annalen der Naturphilosophie printed a German edition in 1921, and Routledge's Kegan Paul printed a bilingual edition with Russell's introduction in 1922.

The years after the Tractatus

Since Wittgenstein thought that the Tractatus had solved all the problems of philosophy, he left philosophy and returned to Austria to train as a primary school teacher. Wittgenstein had unrealistic expectations of the rural children he taught, and had little patience with those children who had no gift for mathematics. But he had good results with children that were interested, especially boys. His severe disciplinary methods led to disagreement with some of his students' parents, and eventually he resigned his position and returned to Vienna, feeling that he had failed as a school teacher.

After abandoning his work as a school teacher, Wittgenstein worked as a gardener's assistant in a monastery near Vienna and then he worked with the architect, Paul Engelmann. This intellectual work did much to restore Wittgenstein's spirits.

Between 1925 and 1928, he joined his sister Margaret in Vienna, where she was having a house built. Wittgenstein and the architect Paul Engelmann built it together, and though they never lived in it, 'Haus Wittgenstein' is still standing in Vienna today.

Toward the end of this work, Wittgenstein was contacted by Moritz Schlick, one of the leading figures of the newly formed Vienna Circle. This contact stimulated Wittgenstein intellectually and revived his interest in philosophy.

Return to Cambridge

In 1929 he decided to return to Cambridge. He was met at the railway station by a crowd of England's greatest intellectuals. He found out to his horror that he was one of the most famous philosophers in the world now. In 1939 Wittgenstein was appointed to the chair in Philosophy at Cambridge.

During World War II he left Cambridge and volunteered as a hospital porter in Guy's Hospital in London and as a laboratory assistant in Newcastle upon Tyne's Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Final years

"Today there were 18 1p coins on the grave of Ludwig Wittgenstein at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge. Originally — some days ago — there were four, spread about; and then five in a little pile to one side. This morning there were 15 neatly underlining his name. Now there are three more, still neatly lined up. Over the years numerous small objects have been placed on the grave including a lemon, a pork pie, a Mr Kipling cupcake and a Buddhist prayer wheel. It is all very intriguing."

Wittgenstein resigned his position at Cambridge in 1947 to concentrate on his writing. When in 1949, he found out that he had prostate cancer, he had written most of the material that would be published after his death as Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations), which might be his most important work. He died of prostate cancer in Cambridge in 1951.

Images for kids

Karl Wittgenstein was one of the richest men in Europe.
Palais Wittgenstein, the family home, around 1910
Ludwig, c. 1890s
Ludwig sitting in a field as a child
From left, Helene, Rudi, Hermine, Ludwig (the baby), Gretl, Paul, Hans, and Kurt, around 1890
Ludwig (bottom-right), Paul, and their sisters, late 1890s
The Realschule in Linz
Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger (1880–1903)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, aged about eighteen
The old Technische Hochschule Berlin in Charlottenburg, Berlin
Ludwig with his friend William Eccles at the Kite-Flying Station in Glossop, Derbyshire
Wittgenstein, 1910s
Bertrand Russell, 1907
Entries from October 1914 in Wittgenstein's diary, on display at the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge
Austro-Hungarian supply line over the Vršič Pass, on the Italian front, October 1917
Wittgenstein's military identity card during the First World War
The Wittgenstein family in Vienna, Summer 1917, with Kurt (furthest left) and Ludwig (furthest right) in officers' uniforms.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, schoolteacher, c. 1922
Frank P. Ramsey visited Wittgenstein in Puchberg am Schneeberg in September 1923.
Wittgenstein, 1925
Wittgenstein worked on Haus Wittgenstein between 1926 and 1929.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1930
Photograph showing Wittgenstein's house in Norway, sent by Wittgenstein to G. E. Moore, October 1936
Wittgenstein on holiday in France with Gilbert Pattisson, July 1936
Wittgenstein in the Fellows' Garden at Trinity, 1939
Wittgenstein in Swansea, Summer 1947
One of the last photographs taken of Wittgenstein, in the garden of Georg Henrik von Wright's home in Cambridge, Summer 1950; Wittgenstein had taken the sheet from his bed and draped it behind him
Plaque in the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin, commemorating Wittgenstein's visits in the winter of 1948–1949.
The plaque at "Storey's End", 76 Storey's Way, Cambridge, where Wittgenstein died.
Wittgenstein on his deathbed, 1951
Death notice issued by Ludwig's family
Wittgenstein's grave at the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge
Illustration of a "duckrabbit", discussed in the Philosophical Investigations, section XI, part II
The "Wittgenstein Monument" in Skjolden, Norway, erected near the philosopher's hut in 2018 by artists Sebastian Kjølaas, Marianne Bredesen and Siri Hjorth. The "hand-mouth" pine monument can also speak and whistle.