one more on Wittgenstein

Let’s just follow up a little more on Wittgenstein’s philosophy. He published the Tractatus in 1921. After that, he felt that he had solved all of the major problems in philosophy and retired from philosophy. He served in World War I (writing philosophy during his breaks), taught in several elementary schools in rural Austria for much of the 1920’s, became a gardener in a monastery, and then spent some time in Vienna working with his sister’s architect to design her new house.

He seemed to take to architecture, although he had no architectural training, and his sister’s house was the only architectural work that he ever did. Nevertheless, he listed himself for years in the Vienna city directory as an architect.

But his return to Vienna was also his return to philosophy. He realized that the Tractatus had indeed not solved all of the major problems of philosophy (although he must have been the only person on earth who had actually believed that it had), and returned to Cambridge in 1929.

However, he never had gotten a philosophy degree, and so he submitted the Tractatus as his doctoral thesis. After Bertrand Russell and the great ethical philosopher G.E. Moore conducted a perfunctory oral examination (which began with Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein chatting for a while until Russell said to Moore, "Go on, you've got to ask him some questions -- you're the professor,” and which closed with Wittgenstein telling his famous examiners, “Don’t worry, I know you’ll never understand it.”), Wittgenstein received his Ph.D., and was appointed a Fellow of Trinity College at Cambridge, where he remained for most of the next twenty years.

The Tractatus was the only book that Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. His Philosophical Investigations was published after his untimely death from prostate cancer just after his sixty-second birthday. This book, which also deals with language and thought,  has been considered a rejection of Wittgenstein’s arguments from the Tractatus (although the Tractatus did that well enough with its closing propositions in which Wittgenstein wrote, “he who understands me finally recognizes [my propositions] as senseless”).

And that is Ludwig Wittgenstein, aeronautical engineer, incomprehensible philosopher, and polymath.