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
Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. ...Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.
An entire mythology is stored within our language.
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.
If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I.
A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I'm a rather bad guide.
If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.
A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.
It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'
For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules-- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules.
Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.
In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.
To think that you are not following a rule is to follow a rule.
The philosophical I is not the human being, not the human body or the human soul with the psychological properties, but the metaphysical subject, the boundary (not a part) of the world.