Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgensteinwas an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. During his lifetime he published just one slim book, the 75-page Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one article, one book review and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. Philosophical Investigations appeared as a book in 1953, and has since come to be...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth26 April 1889
CityVienna, Austria
CountryAustria
The popular scientific books by our scientists aren't the outcome of hard work, but are written when they are resting on their laurels.
What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?
What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arms goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?
Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, nails and screws.--The function of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.
This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.
You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language.
What Copernicus really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view.
Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.
Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones.
How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!
To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to be master of a technique.
Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.
It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.
Philosophy can be said to consist of three activities: to see the commonsense answer, to get yourself so deeply into the problem that the common sense answer is unbearable, and to get from that situation back to the commonsense answer.