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
What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.
My work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.
Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.
The aspects of a thing that are most important to us are hidden to us because of their simplicity and familiarity.
If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.
Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones.
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.
Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.
What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannotbe expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can beput at all, then it can also be answered.
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.''
A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is