Talk:Ludwig Wittgenstein/Archive 2

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#The Tractatus

The section on the Tractatus needs major editing. We need a presentable way of numbering Wittgenstein's propositions. Also, there are topic-placeholders in quotation marks ("") that need to be filled in. Moreover, when we are quoting Wittgenstein, do we want his remarks in quotation marks, or italicized? Wikiwikifast 02:11, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Linz School photo

I'm curious about this sentence:

There is evidence, however, that both appeared simultaneously in a school photograph of all the students.

Is there evidence that this photo exists, or is the photo itself evidence that both appeared simultaneously? — Matt 11:05, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

The photograph is genuine and available from the German archives in Koblenz. It has appeared previously in the book of Walter Langer's wartime OSS report "The Mind of Adolf Hitler" in the unnumbered picture pages in the middle and captioned, if I remember correctly, "Aged 14", which would date it to 1903 or 1904, depending upon which month it was taken. (Hitler and Wittgenstein were both born in April, 1889.) I understand that the historian Brigitte Hamann disputes this, but she has not published her evidence, so far as I am aware. It is obviously a class photograph and not a school photograph, so the reference to "all the students" in the current Wikipedia article is quite wrong. To anyone familiar with how schools operate and with Wittgenstein's poor academic results (he couldn't spell to save himself and his failure to impress his father with his Latin was one of the reasons he was sent to Linz in the first place) it is unlikely that he would have been initially jumped a year level over his age cohort. That is, he most likely would have been initially placed in his appropriate age group. Since Hitler, too, might have started the year in his correct age group and only been made to repeat his previous year after falling behind (too many Karl May stories and all that) it is quite possible that at one stage Hitler and Wittgenstein were in the same class. Nobody actually knows the Realschule's student placement policies in 1903/4 and the photograph itself is the evidence that Hitler and Wittgenstein were at one stage in the same class. That the school records list them in different classes is certainly a difficulty with this hypothesis, but not, I think, an insuperable difficulty, since a police photographic laboratory analysis concluded that the individual student's facial ratios fitted those of Wittgenstein with the highest degree of certainty on a scale of 1 to 5. In short, it is better to trust the evidence of one's eyes rather than school records, particularly since school records are only finalized at the end of the school year and never at its beginning and rarely list the various classes a student has been sent to, but only the last. I note that some of the actual school records have been posted by Djavid Salehi on the University of Passau site and we can view the student names and even the homework they were given. Have a look at:

http://www.phil.uni-passau.de/dlwg/ws07/15-1-97.txt

My own feeling is that Wittgenstein was mercilessly brutalised by his classmates and that the school's solution was to move him to a different class altogether to avoid the bullying. I have added a note to the Wikipedia article supporting the hypothesis that he was having sex with Josef Strigl, which activity would not, I imagine, be looked upon with favour by his provincial classmates.

Click here for photo on book cover. --JimWae 10:28, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)

http://www.fountain.btinternet.co.uk/philosophy/jewof.html reports there were 329 students in the school.--JimWae 05:33, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/History/Cornish1.html lists 16 students registered as Jewish in 1903 - Wittgenstein was registered as Catholic --JimWae 05:33, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

http://www.ok-centrum.at/english/ausstellungen/open_house/blum_michael.html has nearly the whole photo with 40 kids & 1 adult male - possibly a few more kids cut out--JimWae 03:46, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

Wittgenstein once asked rhetorically, "What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life." Wittgenstein posed the question in chastising his student, Norman Malcolm, for naively believing the British were too civilized to plot a bombing assassination of Hitler.--JimWae 05:36, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

Other

I didn't see it anywhere, but is it mentioned that ol' Ludwig was slightly authistic? He walked sideways, you know.. :D Sigg3.net 11:11, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

How do you spell Tractatus? Could someone change the spelling to consistency to whichever is the proper (Tracatus|Tractatus), whichever it is; I am not an expert, though I suspect it is Tractatus.

You're right - its Tractatus, not Tracatus. -Seth Mahoney 05:01, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

On Certainty

I am not sure this is appropriate but at least it's helpful: there is an online html version of L.W.'s "On Certainty", only the English version though.

http://budni.by.ru/oncertainty.html

Philosophical Investigations

Undeniably the most radical difference between the "earlier" and the "later" Wittgenstein is his view of the task of philosophy. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein adopted the "conventional" view of philosophy that had been accepted by almost every Western philosopher since Plato: the philosopher's task was to solve a small number of seemingly intractable problems via logical analysis (for example, the problem of "free will", "is there a God?", what is "the good" or "the beautiful" and so on). By the time of the Investigations however, his view had changed radically. He now argued that these "problems" were in fact pseudo-problems that arose from philosopher's misuse of language.

This is almost certainly false: it not only involves a grave misunderstanding of the conception of philosophy in the Tractatus, but indeed flies in the face of the clear text of the book. On all accounts, there is a considerable continuity on this point between the early and the late Wittgenstein:

4.003 Most propositions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language.
(They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)
And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems are really no problems.
4.112 The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.
The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.
Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.
6.53 The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--but it would be the only strictly correct method.

I am going to see if I can do something to revise the section tonight. If I'm not able to, though, I'd urge someone to edit the passage as soon as possible...

Terms like 'undeniably…' are used to hide things that the author is not too sure about. Yes. The paragraph needs editing. There is remarkably little to distinguish the two Wittgensteins, apart from his noticing that there were other things we could do with words besides make statements. Getting a grasp of what those things are is the subject of the investigations. I've found writing about Wittgenstein remarkably difficult, so I'll wait for your edits. Banno 02:55, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

I attempted a rephrasing, see if it works for you folks. Autrijus 15:41, 2004 Aug 14 (UTC)

References

This is a great article, but I feel it needs some inline references. There are many claims which do need to be referenced. Just pulling out two as examples: (a) that Frege was the greatest logician since Aristotle and (b) that Wittgenstein and Turing argued about issues. Are the main editors who wrote this article able to supply references? Slim 04:40, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Slim--well. That Frege was the greatest logician since Aristotle is of course a matter of a judgment call about the history of philosophy and not a simple report. You will find claims of the sort in some histories of philosophy. But it does strike me as overly broad and not really contributing to the article. Perhaps it should go?
As for (b), Wittgenstein's and Turing's encounters over the philosophy of mathematics are recorded by Witt.'s students notes on his 1939 lectures on the foundations of mathematics, which have been redacted and published as Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics (ISBN 0226904261). It is also mentioned in several biographies of Witt. (e.g. Duty of Genius). This is alluded to in the article already, but I suppose that the exact source and time could be made more explicit.
Thanks for your comments. I am sure that they will make the article better. Are there other points at which you think an explicit reference is important? Radgeek 14:27, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well, I would say it needs references everywhere, to be honest, though I know that's a lot of work. I'm thinking of Wikipedia policies like Wikipedia:Cite sources and Wikipedia:Verification. I think it's a great article but I'm surprised it got featured article status without references. I had an article of mine on Bernard Williams accepted for featured article status and I had several objections because of my small number of references.
The thing about Wikipedia is that it's not about truth; it's about what's verifiable. So, for example, the judgment call about Frege being the greatest logician since Aristotle: that sort of claim just isn't allowed in an encylopedia without a reputable reference (and, as it's such a broad, sweeping statement, the reference would have to be very reputable indeed). In my Williams piece, I wrote that, prior to Williams, utilitarianism and Kant were the two dominant approaches in moral philosophy, which to me was so obviously true that it didn't require a reference. However, the featured article judges wouldn't let me keep that statement in without a reference — and rightly so, even though it was irritating to have to source everything. I would say that particularly articles about academic subjects should be written more as though they are academic papers, with everything fully referenced throughout. Slim 22:12, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)
The article does say arguably -- and the Frege article says widely regarded as -- so they are not bald "statements as fact". I do not know if anyone would have written a paper on who IS the greatest since..., but arguably conveys that there are reasons (not appropriate in an LW article to give), though some might disagree. Perhaps the thing to do is to strengthen the claim in the Frege article. --JimWae 22:39, 2004 Dec 17 (UTC)
Hi Jim, I think you missed my point. I'm sorry I didn't make it clear. Whatever the statement says — that Frege IS the greatest logician, that Frege is ARGUABLY the greatest logician, or that Frege is not a logician at all — it has to be referenced. If he is arguably the greatest, the editor should say in brackets who has argued this e.g. (X, 1972). Wikipedia editors are not meant to insert their own opinions into articles, and this article contains quite a lot of unattributed claims and opinions. It's the issue of attribution I'm pointing to, not whether the claims are true, false or can correctly be said to be arguable. Slim 00:15, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)
  • Hi Slim, I got it; I guess it just does not bother me as much. I doubt there'd be a reputable article that argues he is the best since Aristotle, though, don't you? -- or even an article that argues he is important --
  • one of the more important logicians since Aristotle
  • considered in academic circles to have made some of the most/more important contributions to logic since Aristotle (this seems too tedious, no?)
  • those in the field of logic consider his contributions of some importance?
  • I take arguably to mean: a statement open to dispute but that could be defended in an argument -- only slightly a weasel word. Anyway, I am sure someone will fix it up -- hope it doesn't become too plain, though.--JimWae 00:23, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

I know it's tedious, having to source everything, but I feel it's a good habit to get into, because so much of what we feel we know is, upon reflection, POV, and being forced to hunt down references does make editors stop and think before they put in any contentious claim or personal opinion. I'm going through an interesting experience with this issue myself at the moment with a piece I wrote called Rat Park. It's an almost forgotten psychology experiment that questions the accepted notion of drug addiction. The experiment went very much against the grain of current thinking, and was therefore largely ignored by other scientists — not criticized, just ignored. But I can't make my article NPOV without including criticism of the experiment. I also can't say it was ignored, because that suggests a deliberate stance. I have to say there was no follow-up, but before I can say that, I am literally having to hunt down every possible scientist who might know whether an obscure response may, in fact, have appeared somewhere. I put the article up for featured article status, so I'm having to do this, because my first draft was howled down by objections saying it only gave the one side of the debate. It's infuriating, but I do see their point.

I think I'll remove the Frege remark if you don't mind. It's not connected to W. anyway. Slim 01:25, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

Sure thing. Will you have to source..

who had in the preceding decades laid the foundations of modern logic and logical mathematics.

too?--JimWae 01:44, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

Well, that's a good question. Not every claim can be sourced (try finding a source for the claim that the sun will rise tomorrow), and we also don't want articles with sources for every single sentence.

Anything that you feel might be challenged should be sourced; and anything that is challenged must be sourced or removed. Anything contentious should be sourced so the readers can check its veracity; and anything that is very enlightening or informative should also be sourced (even if not contentious) so that the readers can read more about it, if they want to. Personally, I would source the claim that Frege laid the foundations of modern logic, but I can see that others would object and say that was going too far. So it's up to you. Slim 01:54, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

What's missing from the article?

Perhaps

  • was it not W who developed the truth tables?
  • discussion of how, when & why W abandoned the picture theory
    • Wittgenstein had already given an account of how he became disillusioned with the picture theory: Sraffa, an Italian economist friend, made a Neapolitan gesture, brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. He asked Wittgenstein: "What is the grammar of that?" This, according to Wittgenstein, broke the hold on him of the conception that a proposition must literally be a picture of the reality it describes.
    • Click [1] for more of article excerpted above

--JimWae 06:01, 2004 Dec 17 (UTC)

Photo

I tagged Image:Wittgenstein2.jpg as fairuse old, though I would have been within policy in deleting it from the unresolved listing on WP:PUI. Removal of the template noting it as a problem listed image without resolving the source or comment on WP:PUI was inappropriate. If someone has more info on the image, please add it to the image page. Thanks, -- Infrogmation 17:19, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Copy edit

I've just done a light copy edit of the intro, as it didn't seem to flow well, so I've tried to fix that. I also moved the photograph, as the convention in publishing is that faces shouldn't look away from the text. Readers' eyes are believed to be drawn to where the face is looking: so faces looking to the left should be placed on the right of the page and vice versa. Feel free to move it back if you don't like it. SlimVirgin 06:29, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Name Pronunciation

Can somebody add the pronunciation of his name to the head of the atricle?

Done. Could probably be improved, though. --Goethean 13:14, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Someone has removed it. Is there a reason for this? --Mosesroth

I didn't remove it, but the style guide says pronunciation should be shown in IPA. The current one makes sense to some English speakers (but not all). --Andrew Norman 17:47, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure that a pronunciation guide is necessary (German pronunciation is pretty straightforward), but the one I've added is what the Wiki article says the IPA equivalent is.

--Andrew Norman 16:08, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

His influence

Goethean, I reverted your addition of in the English-speaking world to the sentence "he is regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century." Do you feel that e.g. German philosophers don't regard him as influential? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I'm not aware of his influence being limited to the English-speaking world. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:33, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I do. I don't own any Habermas, but I doubt that he (for example) refers to Wittgenstein much if at all. --goethean 21:37, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What I meant to type is: I don't own any Habermas, but I'll look it up when I go to the library. --goethean 21:40, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Actually, from memory, I believe Habermas does rely on Wittgenstein. Is the distinction you're making between continental and analytic philosophy? SlimVirgin (talk) 21:44, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
Yes. I am aware that there has been a merging of analytic and continental in the last decade or so, but I don't think that it has been so strong that any continental philosopher would grant that Wittgenstein is the most important philosopher of the 20th century. --goethean 21:47, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Here's a link ("Continental European philosophers, on the other hand, hardly have taken any notice of Wittgenstein's work. Those who studied it were a handful of logicians or positivists, exclusively interested in the fields of Logic and Epistemology."), but it appears to be someone's personal website. --goethean 21:50, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It's a legitimate paper. The sentence doesn't say W's the most important philosopher of the 20th century, but that he's widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. I tend to dislike these general statements, though of W it seems fair to me, but it's certainly true that his impact was largely on analytical philosophy. I'm going to ask Mel Etitis for his opinion. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:45, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, well they're probably old pals. --goethean 22:58, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Oh no, Mel's an Oxford man; Wittgenstein was Cambridge. ;-) SlimVirgin (talk) 23:00, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
I understood that especially Philosophical Investigations had a pretty strong influence on the continental tradition, especially as it developed in the US. -Seth Mahoney 23:02, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
Many modern phenomenologists rate Wittgenstein very highly, and he's influential in philosophy of science. FWIW, he was the only person included in the List of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century for his philosophical work. --- Charles Stewart 11:30, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Goethean's claim here is a surprising one, especially given that Wittgenstein is frequently cited as an example (the example?) of a philosopher who is claimed by both sides of the Anglo-American–Continental divide (though on the latter side, it's fair to say only really by the German-speaking world — but see the last citation below). On the other hand, though I know little of Habermas, I've never seen him referred to as being particularly influenced by Wittgenstein, and I can't find any references to that. A (very) quick Google threw up a course on continental philosophy that spends three weeks on Wittgenstein, sandwiched between Arendt & Gadamer [2], and the same lecturer's The Notebook for Contemporary Continental Philosophy, which again clearly places Wittgenstein in the continental tradition, another course placing Wittgenstein in that tradition [3], a Google-cached piece on Stanley Cavell that does the same ("Cavell is a philosopher, one of the few within the analytic tradition (if we still regard both Austin and Wittgenstein as somehow part of that tradition)" [4], and Simon Glendinning (an old colleague of mine) definitely places Wittgenstein in the continental tradition [5]. Surprisingly (for me, anyway), Duncan J. Richter writes:" Similarities between Wittgenstein's work and that of Derrida are now generating interest among continental philosophers" [6]. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:40, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Philosophical Gourmet agrees with my "surpring claim". --goethean 15:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Analytic" philosophy today names a style of doing philosophy, not a philosophical program or a set of substantive views. Analytic philosophers, crudely speaking, aim for argumentative clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics, than with the humanities. (It is fair to say that "clarity" is, regrettably, becoming less and less a distinguishing feature of "analytic" philosophy.) The foundational figures of this tradition are philosophers like Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, the young Ludwig Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore; other canonical figures include Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Rawls, Dummett, and Strawson. [3]
"Continental" philosophy, by contrast, demarcates a group of French and German philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The geographical label is misleading: Carnap, Frege, and Wittgenstein were all products of the European Continent, but are not "Continental" philosophers. The foundational figure of this tradition is Hegel; other canonical figures include the other post-Kantian German Idealists (e.g., Fichte, Schelling), Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Gadamer, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, and Foucault. Continental philosophy is distinguished by its style (more literary, less analytical, sometimes just obscure), its concerns (more interested in actual political and cultural issues and, loosely speaking, the human situation and its "meaning"), and some of its substantive commitments (more self-conscious about the relation of philosophy to its historical situation).

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism writes: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is generally considered to be the most influential thinker in modern Anglo-American language philosophy--a leading, if not founding, figure in the history of ordinary-language philosophy, speech-act theory (see Speech Acts), positivism">logical positivism, and analytic linguistic philosophy and an important contributor to the philosophy of perceptual psychology and the tradition of moral realism. Although Wittgenstein's influence has been less persistent and direct in the realm of literary criticism and theory than in academic philosophy, there is a diverse and growing body of "Wittgensteinian" writing on literary issues, including certain brands of psychological and ethical criticism (e.g., Stanley Cavell), numerous writings concerning the nature of the literary "image" (W. J. T. Mitchell in Wittgenstein and Literary Theory), "ordinary language" critiques of "theory" (W. J. T. Mitchell, ed., Against Theory; John M. Ellis in Wittgenstein and Literary Theory), "speech act" criticism focusing on the contextual understanding of literary expression (Charles Altieri), and a small body of work concerning the relationship between rhetoric and what Wittgenstein called "forms of life" (Cavell; Henry Staten; Frank Cioffi in Wittgenstein and Literary Theory).

A. C. Grayling apparently has a book called Wittgenstein's Influence: Meaning, Mind and Method, but he appears to be a complete Wittgenstein skeptic.--goethean 15:15, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Goethean, nothing above is inconsistent with the view that Wittgenstein was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. That isn't to say the most influential, nor are we claiming he's part of the continental tradition. Also if you note the text you quoted above: "The foundational figures of [the analytic] tradition are philosophers like ... the young Ludwig Wittgenstein ..." As Seth pointed out, Wittgenstein's later work is regarded as quite different from the early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus.
Mel, re: Habermas — Jürgen Habermas: "Sprachspiel, Intention und Bedeutung. Zu Motiven bei Sellars und Wittgenstein". In: Rolf Wiggershaus (Hrsg.): Sprachanalyse und Soziologie. Die sozialwissenschaftliche Relevanz von Wittgensteins Sprachphilosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975, S. 337-338. Another discussion of Wittgenstein's influence on Habermas here [7] in German but with an introduction in English.
I just took a quick look through the books I have here on Continental philosophy (all short introductions), and they all mention the later Wittgenstein. I'd say we're on safe ground calling him "one of the most influential" without qualifying it, and we could link to the Time magazine article Charles found. SlimVirgin (talk) 15:31, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
Time magazine? What does People magazine have to say about it? --goethean 15:37, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
While you were replying, I made a synthesizing edit on article. --goethean 15:39, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Your edit said: "Some consider him to be one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century; others find his influence largely confined to analytic philosophy." We shouldn't really have "some said this, others said that" in the introduction of an article that has featured-article status (or any other for that matter). It also looks wrong because Wittgenstein was a giant; it looks as though we're trying to question that, but without being prepared to name names. Rather than reverting, I've changed your edit to: "He is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century [8], though some argue that his influence was confined largely to analytic philosophy." I think we need to get rid of the second clause, or else we need a citation. SlimVirgin (talk) 15:48, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
Our other alternative in avoiding the she said/he said is to soften the tone of the "influence" text. --goethean 15:55, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sure, what would you suggest? SlimVirgin (talk) 16:01, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Gothean: do you actually have any significant names who assert that Wittgenstein is not one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century? It is easy to find people who say that Wittgenstein is grossly overrated, have no time for him, or find him pernicious, but I have never heard of a currently active philosopher deny that he is one of the kye figures in the story of 20th century philosophy. If we can't find such a name, then I see no case for modifying the original text. --- Charles Stewart 20:10, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wittgenstein's list of influences

In 1931, in Culture and Value section 19, Wittgenstein listed the direct influences on his thinking as: Boltzman, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa. If the following exercise has any value, by my reckoning there are 4 analytic philosophers (counting Boltzmann and Hertz as analytics), 3 continentals and 3 non-philosophers in that list. --- Charles Stewart 20:10, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not to mention the almost-forgotten Fritz Mauthner [9], from whom Wittgenstein took a lot of material, though Mauthner does get a brief acknowledgement in, I believe, the Tractatus. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:17, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
Well, yes and no. W. took some terminology relating to the nature of philosophical criticism from Mauthner (who was in turn adapting from Kant and the Kantian legacy). But he was deeply critical of Mauthner's approach and the only nod to Mauthner in the Tractatus is a notice that the terms W. is appropriating are not being used the way that Mauthner uses them, but rather to be connected with W.'s employment of Russell's theory of descriptions:
4.0031 Alle Philosophie ist "Sprachkritik". (Allerdings nicht im Sinne Mauthners.) Russells Verdienst ist es, gezeigt zu haben, daß die scheinbar logische Form des Satzes nicht seine wirkliche sein muß.
4.0031 All philosophy is "Critique of language" (but not at all in Mathner's sense). Russell's merit is to have shown that the apparent logical form of the proposition need not be its real form.
There's a discussion of Mauthner's views and Wittgenstein's criticism of his approach at the beginning and the end of Chapter 5 in Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin's Wittgenstein's Vienna (121-133, 165-166). HTH. 68.42.182.183 01:36, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
That's me above, by the way. Stupid web. Radgeek 01:47, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Heroically POV paragraph

The end of the section on "The Philosophical Investigations" read:

Needless to say, this viewpoint has not been popular amongst academic philosophers, and Wittgenstein's position in philosophical history is ambiguous. He is generally regarded as a great philosopher, perhaps the greatest since Immanuel Kant (or even Plato), and yet in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s his work was unfashionable. However, with the decline of pure analytic philosophy and the continued lack of progress on traditional philosophical problems, his stock seems to be rising again.

I think there is not one clause in this paragraph worth saving, nor is there any value in this section ending on such a navel-gazing note, and so I have simply deleted it. --- Charles Stewart 20:19, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ben Richards

I would like to create a stub about Ben Richards (not Ben Richardson, as the article erroneously propagated for a while), but I don't even know his dates of birth/death - it is conceivable he is still alive. Does anyone know anything about him that would make the beginnings of a stub? - Jphollow 30/5/05

First paragraph

On my screen it reads --

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein [IPA 'lʊdvɪç 'joːzɛf 'joːhann 'vɪtgɛnʃtaɪn] (1889 April 26 – 1951 April 29) - Austrian philosopher.

Yes, it's just a mess. I find the IPA intrusive in many articles - it does not need to be in first sentence all the time. --JimWae 18:52, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

Language and 'forms of life'

One of Wittgenstein's more important contributions is in exploring relationships between language and 'forms of life'. This should be noted and perhaps expanded on in the main article.

--Imagine&Engage 11:26, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Passionate Convert?

(I moved this comment here from the archive; it was posted there by mistake. Jeffrey is a new user and still learning the ropes around here; I'm doing a bit of "mentoring" for him. -- Essjay · Talk 09:55, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC))

I have never anywhere seen, except on Wikipedia that Ludwig Wittgenstein 'became a passionate convert to Christianity' which is the final line of the first para of biography. I consider this either a 'serious error' or that we need sources! Please excuse if this doesn't come out quite right - it is the first time I have tried to raise an issue. Essjay can help if necessary. None of the material cited suggests either conversion, and certainly not 'passionate.' It is possible that a Dominican priest did say prayers at his grave -though Wittgenstein could hardly be considered responsible! Ray Monk's biography seems both thorough and authoritative on W.'s religious development. Incidentally, with reference to eralier discussion on this 'talk' page, Prof. Gabriel Josipovici told me that W. was well known in Oxford in the late thirties, when he became aware of what was happening in Germany, for constantly saying 'I'm a Jew' -- Jeffrey Newman

The article describes L.W. as a passionate convert on his return from World War I. This much is true and well-documented. The problem is that discussion of his religious views is not followed through his life: he was born into a family of Jewish descent, but they had converted to Christianity a couple of generations before his birth. He was baptized as a Catholic but Russell records that he was a rather militant unbeliever by the time he reached Cambridge. He (re-)converted during World War I, after reading Leo Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief, and became a passionate Christian for some years afterward. (One of the reasons for his falling out with Russell after the war involved his disdain for Russell's atheism.) He remained attracted to religious views for the rest of his life, but eventually found that he could no longer bring himself to believe them. (However, while he spent plenty of time thinking about his Jewishness, his religious leanings were, as far as I know, more or less always towards Christianity; his thought about his identity as a Jew had more to do with the cultural and political realities of Jewish life in Austria, which of course he and his family had to face during the 1930s.) On his death-bed, he was given the last rites by a Catholic priest (and he was buried in a Catholic ceremony), but this was after he had lost consciousness and was done at the behest of his Catholic friends. Here's some relevant passages from Monk's book:

By the time they moved to Vienna in the 1850s the Wittgensteins probably no longer regarded themselves as Jewish. Hermann Christian, indeed, acquired something of a reputation as an anti-Semite, and firmly forbade his offspring to marry Jews. The family was large -- eight daughters and three sons -- nad on the whole they heeded their father's advice and married into the ranks of the Viennese Protestant professional classes. Thus was established a network of judges, lawyers, professors and clergymen which the Wittgensteins could rely on if they needed the services of any of the traditional professions. So complete was the family's assimilation that one of Hermann's daughters had to ask her brother Louis if the rumours she had heard about their Jewish origins were true. "Pur sang, Milly", he replied, "pur sang." (5)
The mother of Karl Wittgenstein's children was Leopoldine Kalmus, whom Karl had married in 1873, at the beginning of his dramatic rise through the Kupelwieser company. In choosing her, Karl was once again proving to be the exception in his family, for Leopoldine was the only partly Jewish spouse of any of the children of Hermann Christian. However, although her father, Joseph Kalmus, was descended from a prominent Jewish family, he himself had been brought up a Catholic; her mother, Marie Stallner, was entirely 'Aryan'--the daughter of an established (Catholic) Austrian land-owning family. In fact, then (until the Nuremberg Laws were applied in Austria, at least), Karl had not married a Jewess, but a Catholic, and had thus taken a further step in the assimilation of the Wittgenstein family into the Viennese establishment.
The eight children of Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein were baptized into the Catholic faith and raised as accepted and proud members of the Austrian high-bourgeoisie. (7-8)
Wittgenstein's loss of religious faith, which, he later said, occurred while he was a schoolboy at Linz, was, one supposes, a consequence of this spirit of stark truthfulness. In other words, it was not so much that he lost his faith as that he now felt obliged to acknowledge that he had none, to confess that he could not believe the things a Christian was supposed to believe. This may have been one of the things he confessed to [his sister] Mining. Certainly he discussed it with [his other sister] Gretl, who, to help him in the philosophical reflection consequent on a loss of faith, directed him to the work of Schopenhauer. (18)
[At Cambridge in 1912] When, for example, Wittgenstein met a student who happened to be a monk, Russell could report gleefully to Ottoline that he was 'far more terrible with Christians than I am':
He had liked F., the undergraduate monk, and was horrified to learn that he is a monk. F. came to tea with him and W. at once attacked him -- as I imagine, with absolute fury. Yesterday he returned to the charge, not arguing but only preaching honesty. (44)
[In World War I] What saved him from suicide, however, was not the encouragement he received from Jolles and Frege, but exactly the kind of personal transformation, the religious conversion, he had gone to war to find. He was, as it were, saved by the word. During his first month in Galicia, he entered a bookshop, where he could find only one book: Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief. The book captivated him. It became for him a kind of talisman: he carried it wherever he went, and read it so often that he came to know whole passages of it by heart. He became known to his comrades as 'the man with the gospels.' For a time he -- who before the war had struck Russell as being "more terrible with Christians" than Russell himself -- became not only a believer, but an evangelist, recommending Tolstoy's Gospel to anyone in distress. "If you are not acquainted with it," he later told Ficker, "then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have upon a person." (116)

Monk also notes that he began to doubt at least by 1937 (pp. 382-384), and that by the end of his life he said he just could not believe Christian doctrines:

[The last year of his life, 1950] This remark was possibly prompted by a conversation about Transsubstantiation that Wittgenstein had with Anscombe about this time. He was, it seems, surprised to hear from Anscombe that it really was Catholic belief that 'in certain circumstances a wafer completely changes its nature'. It is presumably an example of what he had in mind when he remarked to Malcolm about Anscombe and Smythies: "I could not possibly bring myself to believe all the things that they believe." Such beliefs could find no place in his own world picture. His respect for Catholicism, however, prevented him from regarding them as mistakes or "transient mental disturbances." ...
In autumn Wittgenstein asked Anscombe if she could put him in touch with a "non-philosophical" priest. He did not want to discuss the finer points of Catholic doctrine; he wanted to be introduced to someone to whose life religious belief had made a practical difference. She introduced him to Father Conrad, the Dominican priest who had instructed Yorick Smythies during his conversion to Catholicism. Conrad came to Anscombe's house twice to talk to Wittgenstein. "He wanted", Conrad recalls, "to talk to a priest as a priest and did not wish to discuss philosophical problems":
He knew he was very ill and wanted to talk about God, I think with a view to coming back fully to his religion, but in fact we only had, I think, two conversations on God and the soul in rather general terms.
Anscombe, however, doubts that Wittgenstein wanted to see Conrad "with a view to coming back fully to his religion", if by that Conrad means that Wittgenstein wanted to return to the Catholic Church. And, given Wittgenstein's explicit statements that he could not believe certain doctrines of the Catholic Church, it seems reasonable to accept her doubt. (572-574)
[His death-bed, 1951] The next day Ben, Anscombe, Smythies and Drury were gathered at the Bevans' home to be with Wittgenstein at his death. Symthies had brought with him Father Conrad, but no one would decide whether Conrad should say the usual office for the dying and give conditional absolution, until Drury recollected Wittgenstein's remark that he hoped his Catholic friends prayed for him. This decided the matter, and they all went up to Wittgenstein's room and kneeled down while Conrad recited the proper prayers. Shortly after this, Dr Bevan pronounced him dead.
The next morning he was given a Catholic burial at St Giles's Church, Cambridge. The decision to do this was again prompted by a recollection of Drury's. He told the others:
I remember that Wittgenstein once told me of an incident in Tolstoy's life. When Tolstoy's brother died, Tolstoy, who was then a stern critic of the Russian Orthodox Church, sent for the parish priest and had his brother interred according to the Orthodox rite. 'Now', said Wittgenstein, 'that is exactly what I should have done in a similar case'.
When Drury mentioned this, everyone agreed that all the usual Roman Catholic prayers should be said by a priest at the graveside (580)

Whew! That's a lot, I know, but the reason I put it here is to clarify how things progressed over the course of W.'s life, and because the article here tends to be very rich in information, but short in citations of the sources for it, so that when I or someone else has the time to incorporate more information about his religious journey into the article, the sources will be right here for use rather than scattered over the pages of The Duty of Genius.

Hope this helps. Radgeek 04:36, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Quote

An anon just added this as a quote from the Tractatus: "If a proposition is not necessary it is meaningless and approaching meaning zero." I don't have a Tractatus to hand. Does anyone know if this is right? SlimVirgin (talk) 16:19, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

I have the Ogden translation here (and it's online), and I can't find anything even resembling this statement on a quick flick through the section on propositions (4). Googling suggests this is quoted in Naked Lunch, but fails to turn up anything from the Tractatus itself, so I suspect it's something Bill Burroughs made up. It certainly doesn't look like Wittgenstein. --Andrew Norman 16:36, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, the quote as quoted above is surely not from Wittgenstein. Among other things, it's directly contrary to Wittgenstein's doctrine in the Tractatus. If anything, this sounds like a mangled rendering of W.'s remarks on Occam's Razor:
3.328 If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam's razor.
(If everything in the symbolism works as though a sign had meaning, then it has meaning.) [10]
5.47321 Occam's razor is, of course, not an arbitrary rule nor one justified by its practical success. It simply says that unnecessary elements in a symbolism mean nothing.
Signs which serve one purpose are logically equivalent, signs which serve no purpose are logically meaningless. [11]
—Radgeek 20:48, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Intro

I've removed the claim that the Tractatus was written in Cambridge under Russell's supervision (the "World War I" section gives a truer account of the composition and publication). I'm reading Monk's biography at the moment and several things seem to me to need fixing - Monk doesn't mention LW being "met at the train station by a crowd of England's greatest intellectuals", unless Keynes was a crowd. Does anyone have a source for this? The giving away of the family fortune and the donations to several Viennese artists were not at the same time, and so on. I'm not going to cite sources, but assume that any changes I make over the next few days/weeks are from Monk. --Andrew Norman 10:03, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Hitler!

I've moved The Jew of Linz to its own page. Much of the content added to that section recently has come anonymously from an Australian college, and this article seemed to contain far too much information about a theory which is, to put it kindly, not widely accepted. --Andrew Norman 09:43, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Several editors seem really anxious to put back more stuff about Hitler knowing Wittgenstein as a child, or vice versa. This strikes me as a weird digression that is really not important for a WP entry (even if true, which is unclear). The Cornish stuff seems extremely speculative. But even the factual matter that the two attended the same school kinda reaches the level of "so what?!" A brief sentence mentioning the fact is bearable as trivia, but to belabour the point with whole paragraphs distracts from the article. Does anyone really think that if one of the two had attended a different elementary school a few miles down the road, either WWII history, or even the biographies of the two figures, would have been significantly different?! Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:15, 2005 July 30 (UTC)
Anyone apart from Cornish, that is? The Jew of Linz additions (and various other things which seem to be intended to denigrate Wittgenstein) appear to come from one person, alternately using an Australian ISP (Optusnet, apparently in Victoria) and machines at Box Hill College [12], in Melbourne, Victoria. Kimberley Cornish lives in Melbourne, but seems to work at Monash rather than Box Hill, so this may be coincidence, but I'd like to remind the anonymous editor(s?) that registering for a Wikipedia account is free, doesn't result in your receiving any spam or making your email address available to the world, and gives you a whole lot more credibility when editing articles. I agree, the Hitler stuff is trivia and only needs to be mentioned here in passing (as, ideally, would be Ludwig's minor contribution to his family's negotiations with the Nazis regarding their racial classification). --  ajn (talk) 17:40, 30 July 2005 (UTC)


Indeed, but isn't the REALLY significant fact that one of the two DIDN'T attend a different elementary school a few miles down the road? And shouldn't documented details concerning that fact be of further interest to most readers above and beyond the mere mention? I note that it is spectacularly difficult to add information to this article about Wittgenstein and Hitler. The school records had to be posted three times in the face of over-zealous editors determined that anything showing a link to Hitler at school denigrated Wittgenstein, which, of course it doesn't. --Anon

Well, no! It's simply not very interesting or notable that Wittgenstein and Hitler briefly attended the same school (nor even if they were acquainted as children, which is unclear). Editors are not overzealous in removing this, but simply trying to keep the Wittgenstein article on topic (i.e. about Wittgenstein: a famous philosopher, who is interesting for the books he wrote). Not everything true is worth including! And even the oddball theory of Cornish seems to have much more to do with the alleged secret motivation of Hitler than with anything about Wittgenstein (hence, in the wrong article). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 23:19, 2005 July 30 (UTC)
Boring autobiographical analogy: I have a WP entry, as it happens. And I went to the same High School as Jello Biafra, even briefly meeting him during school. Most certainly, either Biafra or myself is only a tiny fraction as notable as either W or H (Biafra much more than me, except in a couple small circles). If anyone feels like adding this boring fact to either WP bio, I'll certainly remove it... not as denigrating or untrue, just as irrelevant. Oh, and my mom went to the same High School, in the same class, as all the The Supremes (but mom doesn't have a WP entry) :-) Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 23:42, 2005 July 30 (UTC)
The article as it exists maybe has just a hair too much on W's homosexuality. Not because it denigrates Wittgenstein—it's a bad thing only in the minds of homophobes. But W isn't significant as a "great homosexual" but rather as a "great philosopher"... the article ought to have balanced perspective on why we might care about Wittgenstein in the first place (his sexual activity ain't the reason). Nonetheless, inasmuch as homosexuality (or bisexuality) shape the lifelong intellectual career of thinkers through stigmatism, forced secrecy, and so on, this is a reasonable matter for a biographical entry. Look at, e.g. W's contemporaries/acquaintences Keynes or Turing for somewhat better, IMO, bios of important thinkers who happened to be homosexual (both articles mention the fact, not out of mere titillation, but in the specific context of how it affected their intellecutual lives). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 23:29, 2005 July 30 (UTC)

If full references are given for a claim connecting Hitler and Wittgenstein I would urge editors to think very carefully about removing them. Why, for example, was the fact that Wittgenstein went to Berlin to negotiate a transfer of 1.7 tonnes of gold to the Nazis removed? Was this not an important matter in his life? Or the fact that Hitler had to personally sign the Befreiung following these negotiations? And why was the negotiation altered to make it the business of Paul, who was in New York rather than of Ludwig who was actually in Berlin? Surely Ludwig's signature on the transfer of 1.7 tonnes of gold from the family fortune to Hitler two weeks before the outbreak of war is colossally important. Readers might justifiably wonder if British citizenship would have been granted had the authorities been informed of his intentions. It's all very well praising Wittgenstein's selflessness working as a porter at Guy's Hospital, but 1.7 tonnes of gold converts to a lot of bombs for the Luftwaffe.

Ludwig did not sign the transfer - he couldn't, because (famously) he had given away all his share of the family fortune to Paul, Hermine and Helene twenty years previously. Ludwig was "actually in Berlin" for a little over one day, as E&E detail (travelled up on one day, spent two nights in a hotel, travelled back on the third day). The money was held by a company owned by the other three, and Paul travelled to Switzerland to sign over the money. The original claim has been altered because, going back to the references, they don't say what the addition here said. Gretl started negotiations with the Nazis and (again, according to Monk and E&E) LW's role was mainly to persuade Paul to accept her plan, once he got his British passport a month prior to the agreement. If you've got some evidence that LW signed the transfer or had a top-secret meeting with Hitler or anything else, you need to produce it, because it isn't in any published source mentioned so far. I don't see any "praising Wittgenstein's selflessness" in the article, I see two neutral sentences recording the fact that he worked as a hospital porter. --  ajn (talk) 05:47, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
When we have your assurance that "Ludwig did not sign the transfer", is this something you actually KNOW? Or is it a deduction based on the the biographical reports of his signing his inheritance over to his family from which it follows that he COULDN'T have signed the transfer? That is, is your claim a deduction from this or is it based on independent evidence? Do you know, in other words, independently of the fact that Wittgenstein is reported to have signed away his inheritance, that Wittgenstein's signature actually was not on the transfer documents?
We have the facts documented in Monk's biography and Wittgenstein's Poker. If you have some evidence (independent evidence - remember Wikipedia:No original research) that LW didn't go to extraordinary lengths at the end of the first world war to divest himself of his share of his father's fortune, and that the money paid to the Nazis was not from a holding company owned by Paul, Hermine and Helene, let's see it. "I say it could have happened so it did" is not the way Wikipedia works. Please register for an account and start signing your comments, by the way. --  ajn (talk) 09:02, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Unfortunately, despite these assertions, there is no passage in EITHER Monk's biography OR in Wittgenstein's Poker stating that Wittgenstein's signature is not on the transfer. I agree the article ought not state that Wittgentein's signature IS on the transfer, because none of us know, but equally, none of us appear to know that Wittgenstein's signature is NOT on the transfer either. It appears therefore to be quite unjustified to categorically state that "Ludwig did not sign the transfer", because none of us is privy to the legal arrangements under which Wittgenstein had previously signed his share of the Wittgenstein fortune over to his family. In fact it is somewhat unclear why Ludwig's presence in Berlin was required at all, if his signature was not required, given that Paul handled his own side of things from Switzerland.

On the matter of Wittgenstein's teaching technique, it is appalling that editors might think it to be "intense and exacting", rather than "bad". Any teacher at a British school today who beats a young female student would on those very grounds face instant dismissal and possibly criminal prosecution. No defence in terms of "intense and exacting" teaching would be allowed. Indeed, such a defence would be rather obscene in the circumstances. The situation was no different then in Austria.

Do you know the situation was "no different then in Austria"? It certainly wasn't in Britain at that time (anyone at school between the wars will have tales of often quite dreadful physical punishment), and Wittgenstein was investigated by the authorities after the incident when he beat a boy around the head and the boy collapsed, and was found to have done nothing wrong. By the standards of the time his behaviour, sadly, was not unusual. Most of the complaints from parents seem to have been about his teaching boys "destined" for farm work about "irrelevant" things and encouraging them to have higher expectations, not about his beating them. I don't think the incident, or W's entire career as a teacher, does him much credit - but it's not unusual by the standards of the time. --  ajn (talk) 05:47, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Anti-Wittgenstein Rants

Look, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters rather misses my point, which is this: Wittgenstein's British biographers have an absolutely shocking track record in concealing facts of Wittgenstein's background. Bartley's academic career was ruined by Elizabeth Anscombe's utter refusal to countenance any mention of Wittgenstein's homosexuality despite the fact that she had in her possession the diary entries proving it.

I'm sorry if Dr. Anscombe stole your candy when you were a child, but none of this has any topicality to an article about Wittgenstein. Maybe you can put something in an entry about Anscombe or Bartley or someone. If you want to include material about philosophical critics of W's thought, that might be interesting; but quibbling about the behavior of every biographer, well after W's death, is not even of tertiary interest to a WP article. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:10, 2005 July 31 (UTC)

The fact is that Wittgenstein attracts acolytes - guardians of the Holy Name - who accord him guru status. When homosexuality became more socially acceptable, Ray Monk's later biography made mention of his homosexuality O.K., but in the process endeavoured to shaft Bartley by falsely claiming that the REAL cause of all the fuss was Bartley's claim that Wittgenstein was promisciously homosexual when in fact he was really all along only a bog-standard normal homosexual. (Bartley HAD made this incidental claim of promiscuity, but the fuss at the time had been over the mere fact of homosexuality; not over promiscuous homosexuality and Monk's grudging treatment in no way helped Bartley.) Likewise, British biographers see nothing unusual in the Soviet government offering Wittgenstein the Chair in Philosophy at Lenin's University in 1935 at the height of the Great Purge in which millions were murdered. They let pass as perfectly normal that Stalin's government would have allowed this offer to be made to the son of Central Europe's most prominent capitalist whose exploitation of workers at his steel plants was a by-word - and subject of Communist novels - without so much as a comment.

Look, anon, I'm a professional philosopher (well, I have been, not so much my profession now). And franky, even as such I neither know nor care what "he said, she said" may have gone on among British Wittgenstein biographers. If I don't care, a layperson stumbling on the article cares still less about some quibble among isolated scholars. Academia can be petty and back-stabbing, it is certainly true. I don't think W is a guru—to my mind he neither solved nor even addressed "all the problems of philosophy"—but I do think he was an important philosopher. But Wittgenstein is not an "important homosexual" or an "important job-decliner" or an "important jewish caricature." I'm not sure if any of those categories have important members, but none certainly are what make W interesting. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:20, 2005 July 31 (UTC)
I'll second this - I'm far from being an "acolyte" of Wittgenstein, it's possible to admire someone's intellectual or artistic productions without admiring them personally (see Miles Davis, whose music I love despite his being a wifebeating piece of shit on occasion, and an awful father). LW seems to have had a dreadful influence on Skinner's life, he had views on spirituality and religion which I abhor, and he was a terrible snob despite his ambition to be working-class (my grandparents were living the sort of life he at times aspired to, and it wasn't a whole lot of fun). On the other hand much of his later writing in particular strikes me as being remarkable and beautiful and profound. The objective here should be to produce a factual article covering the basics, not oddball theories about Hitler and the great conspiracy of poofters which are accepted by virtually nobody. Cornish's theories can go on the The Jew of Linz page, and as for the rest, Wikipedia:No original research should be required reading. --  ajn (talk) 06:07, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

(See, for example, the Wikipedia article itself!) It would be worthwhile to reflect about any other ostensible non-communist academic (were there ANY?) to whom a comparable offer was made. It is SUSPICIOUS yet the Wikipedia article evinces no SUSPICION of Wittgenstein whatsoever, but is shot though, weft and warp with a view of Wittgenstein as the complete secular saint. My own quotation of Brigitte Hamann's comments on Wittgenstein at the Realschule has been deleted despite the fact that it is a complete description of Wittgenstein at an important stage of his life by an independent historian who is on record as opposing Cornish. Why is this? - because it supports the fact that Hitler and Wittgenstein knew each other and interacted at the Realschule, which possibility is anathema to the Holy Name Guardians, just as Bartley's revelations were anathema thirty-five years ago.

In fact, the school records are of vital interest to anyone wanting to follow up on Wittgenstein's intellectual development. In the case of W. W. Bartley, self-apppointed "Wittgenstein protectors" (including Miss Anscombe, one of his now deceased literary executors) attacked him for bringing Wittgenstein's homosexuality to light, falsely believing that this too denigrated Wittgenstein and that Bartley's motives had to be base.

Some brief encounter that Wittgenstein may or may not have had when he was 14 is not of "vital interest" to someone looking to find out "who is this Wittgenstein fellow?" (i.e. a WP reader). It's no secret that anti-semitism existed in Austria around the beginning of the 20th C. Yes, young Wittgenstein would have been aware of that fact, and that perhaps shaped his thinking in some ways. But whether or not the most famous of anti-semites shouted some nasty remark at him or not certainly did not lead W to develop his specific philosophical approach. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:10, 2005 July 31 (UTC)

Gold reserves

Spain in 1939 had no gold reserves, the Republic's assets having been hijacked to Moscow prior to Franco's victory in one of history's biggest heists. The reference to Portugal's reserves as well is probably wrong, a google search indicating Portugal's 1939 reserves were circa 60 tonnes.

On bogus quotations

Every quotation ought to be accompanied by a source reference. In the current list, the following, which superficially SOUND Wittgensteinian, appear to have been made up:

  • "The answer to every philosophical question is a truism."
  • "The object is colourless."
  • 'The world we live in is the words we use.'
Yet another good reason not to have quotes in the encyclopedia at all. That's what Wikiquote is for! Banno 02:22, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
It is a good reason not to have misuse of quotes in the encyclopedia:)
Sigg3.net 21:58, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Not Jewish

Encephalon, why do you think Wittgenstein was Jewish? The article itself says he wasn't. From memory, his father's father was Jewish, and his mother's father was Jewish, which means that neither of his parents were Jews. For Wittgenstein to be a Jew, his mother would have had to be a Jew, which means her mother would have been Jewish, or else he'd have had to convert. In addition to all of that, neither of the parents nor Wittgenstein self-identified as Jews. So I'm wondering why you restored him to that category. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:09, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

The only way he was Jewish, in fact, was according to the Nazi race laws (three of his four grandparents were Jews, but as you say the crucial one was his mother's mother, who was a gentile, and in any case all the family were thoroughly Christian by the time of his birth). He did say some things during the Hitler years about being a Jew, but that seems to have been more self-identification with the persecuted than actually claiming to be a Jew in a religious or cultural sense. --  ajn (talk) 21:25, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
The whole category of "Secular Jewish philosophers" seems like utter nonsense to me to start with. At least half of those listed were only Jewish in some kind of racialist fantasy (whether anti-semitic or Zionist, I'm not certain, probably more of the first), not as anything really pertaining to their life or thought. I tried to temper the list criteria, but frankly I'd rather VfD the category.
Then again Category:LGBT_philosophers seems equally crapulent, for similar reasons. Foucault or Butler indeed write about sexuality, so OK, there's a connection. But of Wittgenstein, it's pointless trivia. <sarcasm>Maybe I should add Category:Philosophers with facial moles because, y'know, some had them and some didn't </sarcasm>. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:06, 2005 August 30 (UTC)
Agreed. ;-D I'm going to delete that category from the article again, assuming no one minds. Lulu, FYI, the link to the VfD page is showing up red on LGBT philosophers. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:20, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Hi. It's not always straightforward, is it, answering the question whether someone is Jewish? Part of the problem I think is that the requirements for being Jewish (as in "of the Jewish faith") are different from the simpler concepts pertaining to descent (as in "of Jewish ancestry"). 3 of LW's 4 grandparents were Jewish; his mother's mother was Austrian Catholic. SlimVirgin and ajn are right that by the standard religious law (matrilineality+belief), LW was not of the Jewish faith. However, he was of Jewish ancestry. There has been quite a lot of work on the "Jewishness" of Wittgenstein, his being (allegedly) a "self-hating Jew," and how, if at all, any of this pertains to his philosophy; some good sources are Bela Szabados (1999), W.W. Bartley (1973), and David Stern (2000). The excellent Stern paper captures my own thoughts on this issue. Excerpt:

Finally, we can briefly return to the question: Was Wittgenstein a Jew? My Hertzian answer is that we would be better off distinguishing different senses of the term, and reflecting on their role in his life and in our own. Wittgenstein's problematic Jewishness is as much a product of our problematic concerns as his. There is no doubt that Wittgenstein was of Jewish descent; it is equally clear he was not a practising Jew.
(Stern D. The Significance of Jewishness for Wittgenstein’s Philosophy. Inquiry. 2000. 43;383-402.)

I think that's quite true, and to the extent that our WP article does that, that's good. I added the cat back into the article because, if we're going to have a cat called "Secular Jewish philosophers," I'm not sure it would make sense not to have LW in it. I agree with Lulu that the whole cat isn't of much use, and is liable to run into the sort of problems identified here. (For the same reason I think the infamous "Lists" that we have on WP, like "of Hindus," "of Sikhs" etc are untenable). I'd support scraping the cat, along with the others Lulu mentioned. But if it's going to be kept, it's sort of strange if LW isn't in it. Anyway, I have no strong feelings on the subject, and if consensus is to remove the cat tag from the article but preserve the cat, that's ok I guess. Cheers—Encephalon | ζ  04:37:26, 2005-08-31 (UTC)

The problem is that Wittgenstein wasn't a Jew in any sense. He had Jewish ancestors, but to be a Jew, his mother (and therefore his mother's mother) had to be Jews and must not have practised any other faith, or else he had to convert. It's not a question of being of the Jewish faith, as you said, or of believing in any particular thing. It's a question of being a part of that ethnicity, and he wasn't. He was born into a Christian family, to a non-Jewish mother. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:00, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
Re: your point "matrilineality+belief," no, not belief. That doesn't come into it. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:01, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
OK, utter digression: Who gets called "Jewish" is not solely a matter of matrilineality, nor of belief. For example, those Nazis of concrete relevance to Wittgenstein's "Jewishness" had a different standard (really, this isn't a Godwin's law thing... I mean the actual ones :-)). There's no objective sense in which "Jewish law" (orthodox? reform? reconstructionist?) is "the truth" and other meanings are "wrong." Another name in the category that struck me was Marx, who is really only called a "Jewish philosopher" by anti-communists (who tend to have a little anti-semitic streak mixed in), but is indeed called such by them. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 05:43, 2005 August 31 (UTC)
I'd say Jews should decide who gets to be called Jewish, and we definitely shouldn't use Nazi definitions. ;-) There are debates within Judaism (see Who is a Jew?), but even within the Reform movement, which will accept someone as a Jew if the father is one, there still has to be some form of public self-identification, which Wittgenstein didn't make, notwithstanding that he referred to his Jewish ancestry. And in any event, neither of his parents was Jewish, even by the current standards of the Reform movement, so this really is a case of accepting the Nazi definition if we want to say he was a Jew, which I'm hoping no one is suggesting we should do. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:00, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
I'd say that really begs the question, doesn't it :-). But even beyond the circularity, I'd say it is certainly not Jews per se who should decide who gets to be called Jewish. Unless you already believe Jewish law, there's no reason why that doctrine should have any special weight in the matter. If you take the religious angle, many self-proclaimed Jews claim that half the other folks who are self-proclaimed Jews aren't "really" Jewish (Reconstructionists are a lot more inclusive than ultra-Orthodox). FWIW, half of all Christians also don't believe that most other self-proclaimed Christians really are such.
But anyway, "Jews"—well, the ultra-Orthodox type anyway—disclaim any significance of self-identification. Autobiographically, for example, I'm not Jewish. I think it's a dreadful religion, every bit as bad as most of the others. And I think the idea of "race" is utter bunk biologically and ideologically. I've only attended a synogogue once, as part of a field trip from my Unitarian youth group (not to an Orthodox one, obviously; a Catholic mass a different day too... I do like Unitarians since they're athiests). But the right subset of my ancestors were "Jewish" that the State of Israel says that I am an automatic citizen (i.e. that I'm Jewish). Blech! I certainly don't want them to have the right to say that: what business is it of their proclaiming something that certainly never had anything to do with any self-identification of mine?! Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:51, 2005 August 31 (UTC)
I absolutely see where you're coming from; much of what you say has the imprimatur of Halakhic principles. As Lulu points out, however, the Halakhic standard may not necessarily be the one standard, or the one that is most suitable to use from an encyclopedia view. LW's father, p. grandfather, p. grandmother, p. great grandparents were all Jewish (Hermann Wittgenstein and Figdor converted to Protestantism, but according to Halakhic and certainly Reform principles, they were still Jewish by Figdor's and Hermann's mother's matrilineality. Karl was Jewish by the same standard. There has never been any question of Moses Meier's Jewishness. The name "Wittgenstein" itself was only taken on after the Napoleonic decree of 1808 that all Jews take a surname; "Wittgenstein" is the name of the Westphalian principality where the town of Laasphe, ancestral home of the family, was situated.). LW's m. grandfather was also Jewish. Only LW's own mother (and hers) was not. By the religious Halakhic doctrine, LW is therefore not "Jewish." However, when at least 75% of his immediate ancestry was Jewish, and only 25% not, the argument that he was not "a part of that ethnicity" is tenable (only) under the religious injunctions. I think those who argue that "there is no doubt that Wittgenstein was of Jewish descent; it is equally clear he was not a practising Jew" are quite correct. (This definitely has nothing to do with the Nazi view, incidentally, which is very, very very, different!!). Regarding self-identification, LW certainly identified as a "Jewish thinker;" see Culture and Value, UChicago ed, pp18. But seriously, SlimVirgin, I think your view has a lot going for it too and I don't really have strong feelings either way about the cat, so really I'm fine if you want to leave it out. Thanks!—Encephalon | ζ  06:21:33, 2005-08-31 (UTC)
I wonder whether this is perhaps being caused by a confusion of race, ethnicity, and religion. He had Jewish ancestors, but wouldn't be called a Jew (ethnically or in terms of religion) by any standard that I'm aware of, not only because his mother wasn't a Jew, but also because his ancestors (the ones I know about) had converted to Christianity, and would therefore not be regarded as Jews, either by themselves or by anyone else (except the Nazis, of course). And whether W was a practising Jew is irrelevant because neither his father nor his mother were Jews. Had W wanted to be a Jew, he would have had to convert. I don't think even today's Reform movement would have accepted him as a Jew even if he had self-identified as one. If we were to include in the list of secular Jewish philosophers, all philosophers who had any Jews as ancestors, the list would be long indeed. But hopefully the category will be deleted anyway. ;-) SlimVirgin (talk) 06:35, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Digression on in-group and out-group semantics

Just to address another point you made, if a Jew converts to Protestantism, I don't think they're regarded as a Jew by anyone after that. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:47, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Well, at least they didn't in those days. They're still considered Jews nowadays by the Jews for Jesus types, and other Christian sects and organizations that specifically target Jews for proselytization, although that consideration is more for reasons of religious politics and appeal to emotion than it is any identification of such converts as somehow "other". That said, the idea that Jews shouldn't be the ones to determine who is and who isn't a Jew is one that was first forwarded by the Turners, the precursors (happily, powerless) to the Nazis. It was they and their ilk who happily branded Marx a Jew eventhough not only was his mother not a Jew, his father converted to Anglicanism before Marx was born. Engels, on the other hand... :-p But I digress. Even the Nazis let the Jews determine who was and wasn't a Jew. The Nazis didn't invent Jewish grandparents for people they didn't like. The systematic extermination of the Jews was regarded as requiring someone who had so little attachment as a single Jewish grandparent...whether or not that grandparent was a Jew who had converted to Christianity or to no religion at all. The fact remains, however, that the Nazis didn't redefine "Jew", they accepted the Talmudic answer to the question "Who is a Jew?", so this business of everyone now coming along saying "non-Jews should also be able to determine who is a Jew" is even more patently ridiculous than it sounds on its face. Tomer TALK 18:42, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
Well, basically, that's entirely wrong above. The ridiculous notion, for an encyclopedia, is that some fuzzily defined (but relatively narrow) group somehow defines a term/category of wider usage. This isn't a project for Talmudic hermenuetics, it's an encyclopedia.
Gee... isn't this a page about Wittgenstein, who had a few comments about the non-rigid determination of categories, largely by "family resemblance" (not only in the narrow sense of cousins with similar facial features). You'd get the same absurdity (under the religious angle) if you said "Only Muslims (whoever that is) can determine who is a Muslim" (Wahhabism is basically the belief that Shia aren't "really Muslims", to simplify a bit). Or, if you take the "race" angle, if you were to claim "Only Blacks can determine who is Black" (in practice, historically, it's mostly been "Whites" who determined the membership of the category of alterity; including in laws that proscribe varying treatment based on category membership).
Unless you want to try to trademark the words, terms like "Jew", "Jewish", etc. don't belong to anyone. They are widely used in a family of interrelated meanings, with some of the different senses very loosely affiliated with speakers who have organizational and political affiliations. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:14, 2005 August 31 (UTC)
Your point is irrelevant. Not only are most of the "loose family of meanings" for "Jew" and "Jewish" mostly derogatory, but the thing about the Wahhabis is a false analogy. A more accurate comparison would be to say that Theravada Buddhists are determining that Shia aren't "really Muslims", but that Sikhs really are. Tomer TALK> 19:31, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
Some of the meaning are derogatory, most are not. But it is not NPOV to decide which meanings we approve of. Words live in the wild, not (firstly) in doctrine! The Wahhabi analogy is actually quite close: Orthodox Judaism (under a similar simplification) is the doctrine that all those people the Reconstructionist Jews say are "Jewish" are not really Jewish (especially within the context of modern Israeli immigration politics). In other words, two sects that advocate different extentionality for the "in-group" term. Various self-identified Jews by no means agree on the meaning of the word "Jewish" while few of them mean anything derogatory in either case.
But anyway, in one of the senses within the "loose family of meanings" of "Jewish", Wittgenstein (or Marx, or Arendt) was a "Secular Jewish philosopher". I think we should assume good faith for whoever first added that category to this page—one can disagree with the tag, but I don't think it was intended as derogation. In some not-uncommon (nor Turnerite nor Nazi) sense, Wittgenstein was "Jewish". And in a somewhat different sense, I'm also a "Secular Jewish philosopher" (even though I'm offended at the thought of being so classified). And in a still different sense, Marx is; and in a still different sense Arendt is (or Rand, except the philosopher part :-)).
Actually the thing about the Theravada Buddhists doesn't cut the way you suggest either. If for some odd reason (and obviously, completely counterfactually), Theravada Buddhists did widely call Sikh's "Muslim", Wikipedia should state that fact neutrally. It's not our role as editors to judge that the hypothetical Buddhist word usage is wrong, and we the editors (or those editors who are self-identified as Muslim) know what's right. Of course, in this bizzaro world stipulated, it might also be appropriate to quote Imam So-and-So saying "Those Buddhists are really wacky" (depending on the article topic). We live in the same kind of bizzaro world as stipulated, in fact, relative to the word "Indian", which through an old and foolish mistake means also Native Americans (including internally among many North American tribes). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:40, 2005 August 31 (UTC)
You apparently fail to understand. Orthodoxy does not say that Reform and Reconstructionist (or whatever) are not Jews, they say that their religion is not Judaism. There's a difference. Simultaneously, of course, the Reform and Reconstructionist groups perform conversions and call their converts "Jews", with which Orthodoxy disagrees on technical grounds which the Reform especially, dismiss as irrelevant. Still tho, it's Jews determining who is and isn't a Jew, not Christian Scientist authors or Ahmadiyya housewives. I'm not going to say "PersonX converted reform, therefore they're not Jewish", nor is any Jewish author here, at least not in the context of a WP article. That's POV pushing. At the same time, saying that non-Jews have just as much right to determine who is/n't a Jew is POV pushing. Here's a different analogy for you, since don't seem to get the Theravada monks calling Sikhs muslims one: who should be permitted to define who is/n't a Canadian citizen? The Zulus or the Canadians? Tomer TALK> 22:54, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid you're still stuck inside an inherently POV belief system. None of the things you claim are even conceptually coherent unless you first stipulate that the theological doctrine of (one particular denomination of) Judaism is true, or at least in some sense "binding." There's nothing wrong with you believing that personally, but it is conceptually flawed to mistake it for a universal epistemic position.
The stuff about "it's Jews determining" it is just a bit weird. As I write above, it's a really massive "begging the question". To (self-described) Orthodox Jews, a good percentage of those Reconstructionist Jews who describe themselves as Jewish, aren't. That's precisely how they say it. But within Reconstructionism, no distinction is made between "those Jews whom the Orthodox sect calls Jews" and the others. So those Reconstructionist self-described Jews who "make the determination" either are or are not "Jews", depending on which "Jews" you ask. There's an indeterminacy here which you can only avoid by kinda putting your fingers in your ears, and chanting "la, la, la, I can't hear you."
But even apart from the destructive circularity, the whole diversion about "right to determine" is a sort of "How long have you beat your wife" distraction. The use of categories like this isn't about "rights" and "determination"... it's a question of usage. As in descriptive, not prescriptive. If a usage exists "in the wild" (of any term, "Jewish" is nothing special), WP should acknowledge it (within appropriate articles).
Now it is true that a stictly hierarchical and centrally governed organization can determine "membership rules". Like the government of Canada. Or the government of Israel. Or the Kiwanas. Or the Catholic church, for that matter. But "Jews" or "Judaism" is not such a central organization. In some alternate universe, perhaps there could evolved such a "world council of Judaism" to collect membership dues. But that's not what happened. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:11, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
Lulu, I think you're continuing to confuse race, religion, and ethnicity. First, Muslims do determine who else may consider themselves Muslim. I can start to call myself a Muslim today if I want to, but it won't make me one in the eyes of any other Muslim, and to argue otherwise is to wander close to saying we can use the words in any way we choose (private language argument). Similarly, Tomer's argument above that Canadians should decide who else gets to be called a Canadian is a good one.
No, I clearly understand those several categories—all ficticious categories, thoough they are—that "define the horizon" around the many meanings of "Jewish". Within Jewish theology, several only loosely conceptually connected things are kinda smashed together, and the conceit is advanced that all the categories are the same. And likewise, given history, and most especially a history of anti-semitism, a slightly different collection of categories are also smashed together to make up the "view from outside" on "Jewishness". But as aware as I am of several whole bundle of fictions, I don't think that words express essences. I think words are simply what people use to say things. I get this understanding, FWIW, in large part from Wittgenstein (hence a tiny sliver of connection to this conversation).
I agree about words not expressing essences, and that the categories are fictions, as all categories are (how could they be otherwise?), but insofar as their usage is accepted, my argument is simply that my usage is recognized more widely that yours (though I'm still not entirely clear what yours is). SlimVirgin (talk) 01:54, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Your meaning (matrilineage) is indeed quite widely used. Not universally, but quite possibly even majority usage. I have no objection to that usage, per se. Like my other comment, a category "Philosophers who are matrilineally Jewish (and also so self-described?)" would at least have sufficiently clear boundaries (even if being a bit silly). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:00, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
LOL!! SlimVirgin (talk) 03:28, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
On the Muslim thing, you're mistaken in just a flat-footed factual sense. There is no central Islamic authority corresponding to the Canadian Department of Immigration. For example, Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple, or the Nation of Islam (to pick rather American examples I know), are rather heretical in the eyes of most Muslims worldwide. But in fact, those groups decided to call themselves Muslim, and that's what they are. Of course, for that self-description to become widely used, it took more than Timothy Drew sitting by himself and declaring to no one in particular "I'm a Muslim". But that rather more is what happened: specifically, the usage entered the lexicon widely enough that Noble Drew Ali is called a Muslim, whether some Wahhabi Imam likes it or not. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:40, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
And similarly there is no central authority in Judaism. Nevertheless, someone wanting to convert to either must at some point visit an imam or rabbi, rather than sit at home and unilaterally don the mantle. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:54, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I think narrowly there is a difference between Islam and Judaism here. If you were trapped alone on a desert Island with a copy of the Koran, you could become a Muslim, no? Not so with the island and the Torah, right? (assuming you weren't "one of the chosen people" before you got to the island). So I guess in that sense, Judaism is a little bit more centralized than Islam. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:50, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
I don't know about Muslims and desert islands. I recall that you only have to say you're a Muslim, but I think there has to be someone there to hear you say it, and that someone has to be an imam. But that's from memory. Yes, Judaism is stricter and more centralized in that sense. Christianity only says you must declare that you accept Christ into your life, but again, must there be someone (other than Christ) there to hear you declare it? I don't know. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:28, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Secondly, if anyone with Jewish ancestry is to count as Jewish, where should the cut-off point be, in your view, before they're allowed into (forced into) one of the Jewish categories? How much Jewish blood is needed, and how close in time ought the relatives to be? These are the Nazi-esque questions we're arguing should be avoided.
I have not agenda, nor even criteria, for who might "count" as Jewish. It's a very fuzzy and context-dependent description. I also have no agenda, nor criteria, for who might "count" as Black, for example. A variety of organizations, advocacy groups, governments, and so on, have opined on both questions, with varying effects. Some effects involved the state monopology on the legitimate use of violence (as Weber says), and other operated only in the realm of ideology.
Okay, but we have to adopt a criterion if we're to have a category, and my point is that I'm offering one (what the Orthodox, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements say), and you're not. When working with categories, we have to accept that we're ... working with categories, as fictitious as they may be. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:54, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
That's true, you've almost offered a criterion. There's still a bit of wiggle room in denominational differences within Judaism. If the category were to say "Philosphers who are Jewish according to the Rabbinical Council of America", that's sufficiently disambiguated. Of course, definitely remove Spinoza in that case, excommunication and all :-). That would be a silly category to have, but at least one where we could decide whom to include. But that's not quite the category I hope gets deleted. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:50, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
But as I mentioned in a comment to TShilo12, I have no interest in the normative here. If I work on an article concerning a person or group that tends to use the term "Jewish", I might include something about the characteristics of their usage of the term. And I suppose that I might describe a different extentionality in the Rabbinical Council of America's usage of the term versus the Aryan Brotherhood's usage. (and yeah, even though I have no particular fondness for either group, I find the latter a whole lot more distasteful than the former; but my opinion isn't NPOV, so I wouldn't put it on an article page, only on a talk page). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:40, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
I didn't completely follow this point. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:54, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Different groups have different criteria about who is Jewish. NPOV says we don't choose who we like better in a generic use of the term. Nor even that we exclude the usage of the people we really, really dislike. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:50, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
Okay, but we can exclude certain usages on the grounds of silliness, and often the silly people are the ones we really, really dislike, so it all works out in the end, I find. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:28, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
We're discussing Jewishness as an ethnicity here, not in terms of racial characteristics, and not Judaism as a religion, so the issue of belief is largely irrelevant, except for converts. The Jewish people have decided (with varying degrees of agreement) that to be classified as a member of that ethnicity, people must have a Jewish mother, who was herself born to a Jewish mother or who converted before the child's birth; or a Jewish father, which must be accompanied by a public declaration of identification with the Jewish people; or they must themselves convert. (Immigration to Israel is a separate issue as there are other categories.) In the same way, Canadians have a list of rules regarding how to become a Canadian, and Muslims about how to become a Muslim. Your white/black analogy is racial, which isn't what we're talking about. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:11, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
You keep writing this as if I do not know the fairly simple rule about matrilinity. I perfectly well know what it is, I just don't believe it means what you claim it means (in terms of how words work). For that matter, I even know about what constitutes a Ger tzedek, and how it differs within denominations. I also don't believe White/Black is "racial" FWIW, I know it's a purely ideological construct (like the concept "race" itself). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:40, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
Then I don't know how words work. But then I never have, so it's okay. ;-) SlimVirgin (talk) 01:54, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
I only know as much as I read in my Wittgenstein. Or occassionally I know what Althusser or Spinoza tell me. :-) Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:50, 2005 September 1 (UTC)
I think I've pretty well surrendered here, particularly at the mention of Althusser and Spinoza. ;-D SlimVirgin (talk) 03:28, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Hopefully only because this entire discussion has accomplished exactly zilch, and as long as it's gone on, it's pretty clear that continuing it would be a complete waste of your time, my time, Lulu's time, and the poor souls who have taken up too much of their time to have read it already... Tomer TALK> 05:48, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Making a CfD

I'm going to CfD the category right now. Give me a few minutes to do the administravia (I fumbled around figuring out the LGBT one, but I think I know what I'm doing now). Pleae feel free to vote for deletion. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:48, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

Hey, cool. How do you do that? Is it the same as VfD? If you post a link I'll come vote.—Encephalon | ζ  04:52:25, 2005-08-31 (UTC)
No, not the same as VfD. I wasted a bunch of time doing it wrong because I had only been familiar with VfD. I won't repeat the instructions here, but basically it's simpler than VfD is (read the instructions for details). Anyway... both CfD's are ready: please opine at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:56, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

"Whereof" translation

I just noticed SlimVirgin asking about the famous final proposition of the Tractus in the edit history. The translation that sounds slightly funny to many, but to my ear mellifluous, is from Ogden's 1922 translation (I think the first, and most widely read, English translatiou). You can find it online at: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - Hypertext of the Ogden bilingual edition

Proposition 7: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:57, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

You can translate it a number of ways, but that seems to be the well known one. "About which one cannot speak, one must be silent," etc. I might even like about which better personally because "Where" seems to imply a place. --Chadamir 16:24, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Nononono! "About that which one may not speak, one must shutup"! :P (smiley) (or "If you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut.") Tomer TALK> 06:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I was always taught to say: "Whereof one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence." And W. would have agreed with Tomer, except he'd have said: "If it's in principle impossible for you to know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut." ;-) SlimVirgin (talk) 06:51, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Or maybe: If you're gonna talk the talk, you better walk the walk! :-) (I still stand by the claim that Ogden translated it as above, whichever way is actually best). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:09, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Or perhaps as that great philosopher my father would say "Better to be seen and not heard". Tomer TALK> 10:36, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I've always liked Frank P. Ramsey's version: What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either which is nice in it's oblique refernce to Wittgenstein's famous talent for whistling classical music. Stumps 10:47, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Hey! I have such a talent too! But my mom always characterized it as "annoying" rather than "famous"... :P (smiley) Tomer TALK> 10:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, the trick is to be an enigmatic logician and then have one of your American students write a book about his experiences with you which, amongst other things, mentions your affinity for note perfect whistling of classical music accompanied by running commentary (listen to this bit!) - then it will be "famous". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.232.243.176 (talk) 13:30, 30 March 2008
As for the translation of 'Whereof' you are all better off referring to the German. The words explicitly say 'pass over' so 'shut up!' is manifestly not a good rendering. As literal as possible it ought to be "Of what one can not speak, pass over it one must in silence" but that sounds clunky hence the familiar renderings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.232.243.176 (talk) 13:30, 30 March 2008

Kant I

Wittgenstein learned Kant's philosophy by reading Schopenhauer's Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy. Schopenhauer's account was extremely readable and provided an epitome or résumé of Kant's thought. Lestrade 13:35, 12 October 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

New Testament

There is a trail that leads from Schopenhauer to Wittgenstein's interest in the New Testament. In the fourth book of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, he stated that Christ's denial of both egotism and willfullness indicated the way to salvation, deliverance, or release from suffering. Tolstoy enthusiastically embraced this outlook and wrote a book about the gospels. Wittgenstein read both Schopenhauer's and Tolstoy's opinions and he accepted their views. Lestrade 13:27, 12 October 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

"New Wittgenstein"

I started an article on the "New Wittgenstein" interpretation (this is not the best name, but it was the title of a recent book of essays by a bunch of the hotshots.) Please help expand and correct it. Many thanks, Sdedeo 15:45, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Russel?

Why is Russel listed both in Influences and Influenced?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.226.246.81 (talk) 23:59, 19 December 2005

  • Wittgenstein read, studied under, and was influenced by Russell's Principles of Mathematics. When Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus, Russell himself admits, in the introduction to the Tractatus, that he is immensely impressed by the work, and subsequently Russell revised his work based on the Tractatus.

From Bertrand Russell's bio: Russell's influence on individual philosophers is singular, and perhaps most notably in the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was his student between 1911 and 1914. It should also be observed that Wittgenstein exerted considerable influence on Russell, especially in leading him to conclude, much to his regret, that mathematical truths were trivial, tautological truths. Evidence of Russell's influence on Wittgenstein can be seen throughout the Tractatus, which Russell was responsible for having published. Russell also helped to secure Wittgenstein's doctorate and a faculty position at Cambridge, along with several fellowships along the way. However, as previously stated, he came to disagree with Wittgenstein's later approach to philosophy, while Wittgenstein came to think of Russell as "superficial and glib," particularly in his popular writings

Cheers! Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 14:30, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

For that matter, Ramsey should ideally be listed under both influenced by and influenced as it was his discussions with W. more than anyone elses (arguably) that led to the Philosophical Investigations. 128.232.243.176 (talk) 14:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Zip It

We can't speak about anything that we haven't experienced. Has anyone experienced the witnessing of Wittgy's sexual activities? Has Wittgy publicly described his sexual activities? If not, what is all this talk about his liaisons and preferences?

It seems to me that there is an inverse relationship between interest in Wittgy's mental ideas and his physical acts. The less that someone is interested in what he wrote, the more they are interested in what he did.Lestrade 14:02, 31 December 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

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