People I’d like to meet — definitely

Ludwig Wittgenstein

At one time I was quite taken with Wittgenstein’s thought and writings. How much of it I understood is probably not a great deal. Wittgenstein’s story however is (to me at least) romantic, inspiring, and fascinating.

The seven main propositions of the Tractatus:

1. The world is everything that is the case.
2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of atomic states of affairs.
3. A thought is a logical picture of a fact.
4. A thought is a proposition with sense.
5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
6. The general form of a proposition is the general form of a truth function, which is: .
7. Where (or of what) one cannot speak, one must remain silent.

Number seven is often translated whereof one cannot speak thereof one must remain silent (C K Ogden’s translation).

This proposition is intriguing (given an interest in Zen).

6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

From the Wikipedia article on Wittgenstein:

Wittgenstein died from prostate cancer at the home of Edward Vaughan Bevan, his doctor, in Cambridge in 1951. His last words were: “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”.

He had an extraordinary life for sure.

I could ask him about The Jew of Linz.

Filed under: culture, people I'd like to meet, philosophy