Ludwig Wittgenstein: Life and Work


·         Born on 26 April 1889 in Vienna, died 29 April 1951 in Cambridge.

·         His family was of mixed Jewish, Protestant and Catholic origin.

·         His fathesr Karl Wittgenstein was one of the richest businessmen in Austria. An owner of
an iron and steel industry complex (Poldi Kladno).

·         Their family house hosted the most distinguished artists of the time: Johannes Brahms,
Franz Grillparzer, Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler, Gustav Klimt.

·         LW has four brothers and three sisters. Two brothers committed suicide.


·         LW visited the second-rate Realschule in Linz. Adolf Hitler was one of his schoolmates.

·         His earliest influences are

o    Karl Kraus, his satirical journal Die Fackel (“The Torch”)

o    Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

o    Otto Weininger, Sex and Character, his conception of genius, the duty to think clearly as a
duty to oneself)

o    Heinrich Hertz, Principles of Mechanics, his method of dissolving conceptual problems

o    Ludwig Bolzmann


·         LW studied mechanical engineering in Berlin and aeronautics in Manchester.

o    He conducted his own research leading a patent of a jet rotor (for a helicopter).

·         At that time, he read

o    Bertrand Russell’s The Principles of Mathematics

o    Gottlob Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik

·         He suggested a solution of Russell’s paradox.


·         On 18 October 1911, he appeared in Russell’s office. This date marks the begin of their
fruitful collaboration.

·          In 1913 he dictated his earliest text that survived: the Notes on Logic.

o    Logic is the basis of philosophy.

o    Distrust of grammar: surface grammar can lead us astray

·         In 1914 he dictated notes to G.E. Moore which weren’t accepted as a BA thesis.

o    the distinction between what can be said and what has to be shown.


·         In 1914 LW got rid of his inheritance in favor of Austrian artists without means. Rainer
Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl were among them.

·         He was enlisted as a volunteer into Austrian army and sent to the Eastern front.

·         Reading Leo Tolstoy’s Gospel in Brief.

·         Often thinking of suicide and the meaning of life (“The meaning of life … we can call
God”)

·         Awarded for bravery and valor.

·         Finally, in 1918, he was transferred to the Italian front and ended up in a prisoners of
war camp.


·         During the war years, Wittgenstein wrote his first main work Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus.

o    The manuscript was rejected by two publishers.

o    Eventually published with a help of Bertrand Russell and with his introduction (which
according to Wittgenstein misinterprets the main idea of the book).


·         In 1920 Wittgenstein began his unsuccessful career as primary schoolteacher in rural
Austria.

·         From 1926 to 1928 he worked as an architect designing a modernist house for his sister.

·         In 1929 he returned to Cambridge and obtained his PhD for the Tractatus.

·         Since the end of the 1920s, he was regularly meeting with the members of the Vienna
Circle, esp. with Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann.


·         Wittgenstein spent his academic career as a lecturer and later as a professor in
Cambridge.

·         Often visiting his family in Vienna and his hut in Norway.

·         In 1935 he investigated a possibility of moving to the Soviet Union.

·         During the Second World War, he worked as a porter in a hospital and a technician for a
medical research.

·         He didn’t manage to publish anything (save one paper) during his Cambridge years. He
avoided academic journals and conferences.

·         In 1947 he resigned his professorship.

·         He died in 1951, writing his remarks to his last days.

Further reading

Monk, R. (1990). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Jonathan Cape.

McGuinness, B. (1988). Wittgenstein. A Life (Vol. 1): Young Ludwig 1988–1921. Duckworth.