Ludwig Wittgenstein
The engineer-turned-philosopher who wrote two systems that destroyed each other: first language as logic's picture, then language as lived use.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Core ideas
- The limits of my language mean the limits of my world
- Meaning is use, within a form of life
- Philosophy untangles; it does not build theories
Historical context
Three brothers' suicides, two world wars, one austere chair at Cambridge — and the rare case of a thinker refuting his own early masterpiece in public.
Key works
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus · Philosophical Investigations
Questions they speak to
Minds in conversation
- Immanuel KantKönigsberg
- David HumeEdinburgh
- NagarjunaSouthern India
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Wittgenstein