Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most striking, paradoxical and charismatic philosophers of the twentieth century. Despite the fact that he was not recognized by his contemporaries and was estranged from society, he had a great influence on the formation of modern principles and laws of thought. Wittgenstein became the forerunner of at least three intellectual philosophical movements - logical positivism, linguistic philosophy and linguistic analysis.
short biography
Austria and Great Britain had a great influence on the life and philosophy of such a thinker as Ludwig Wittgenstein. A brief biography clearly indicates this. The future philosopher was born in Vienna in one of the most famous and richest families of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a famous engineer and tycoon, and his mother came from an ancient Jewish family.
Like his father, Ludwig Wittgenstein began to study engineering, in particular, was interested in the design of aircraft. Over time, this led him to the problem of the philosophical foundation of mathematics. In addition, there were other things that Ludwig Wittgenstein was interested in. Biography indicates that he was fond of music, sculpture, architecture, literature and art. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein went to Cambridge, where he became a student, and later assistant and friend, of the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell.
During World War I, Wittgenstein volunteered for the front, where he was captured. During his stay in the prisoner of war camp, he practically completed one of his most famous works - the Logical and Philosophical Treatise - which had a huge impact on the development of European and world philosophy. After that, he worked as a teacher in a regular rural school. Over time, Wittgenstein understands that his philosophy is largely erroneous and needs to be improved, so he again returns to the UK, where he continues to work on his treatise, while being a professor at Cambridge University.
During the Second World War, he works as a nurse, and also deals with his new direction - the philosophy of language. Wittgenstein died in 1953 from prostate cancer. All his ideas regarding the philosophy of language were published posthumously.
Early Wittgenstein Philosophy
In his youth, Ludwig Wittgenstein was actively interested in the activities of the literary and critical avant-garde in Vienna, and was also interested in the ideas of K. Kraus, the editor of the Fakel magazine, which dealt with the separation of value and fact in art. The ideas of G. Frege and B. Russell, under whose leadership he worked for a long time, also had a strong influence on Wittgenstein. From the first he adopted the idea of a propositional function, the true meaning, as well as the semantic difference in the meaning and meaning of expressions in the language, from the second - the method of analyzing the language in a logical way, which includes the search for "atomic" facts, as well as individual elements of the logical description of mathematics.
The first logical ideas of Wittgenstein were formulated in his Diaries, where he talks about the possibilities of new logic and logical syntax. These thoughts became the basis for his key work of this period - the Logical and Philosophical Treatise.
"Logical and philosophical treatise"
The work was published in 1921, first in German, and then in English. The book is written in the form of individual aphorisms, which Ludwig Wittgenstein used to interpret his ideas. Quotations are placed next to the corresponding figures indicating the level of importance of an individual aphorism.
Despite the similarities with the ideas of Russell and Frege, the book was in many ways unique. The treatise raises the question of the possibilities and boundaries of thinking, while the author combines the concepts of thinking and language, and philosophy at the same time acts as a kind of analytical criticism of the language. In Wittgenstein’s concept, a language has the function of indicating facts, which is possible due to the internal logical structure of the language. This doctrine still plays an important role in modern Western intellectual directions.
The late philosophy of Wittgenstein
Over time, Ludwig Wittgenstein rethought his position and abandoned the a priori structure of the language. It indicates the variety of words and phrases that are used in a natural language. In accordance with this, the word does not appear in the mental image of the subject, only the use of words in the context in accordance with linguistic rules gives the word a certain meaning.
Wittgenstein operates with such a concept as language games, where each word gets its meaning only when certain game conditions are met. Wittgenstein also points out the need for the right questions. Wittgenstein’s late philosophical position is described in his work Philosophical Studies.
