PH 350

Welcome to the Philosophy of Wittgenstein

Biography

Wittgenstein was born in 1889 in Vienna. After abandoning a career in Engineering, much to his father's chagrin, he began studying the foundations of logic with Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege.  By 1921, his first Book, The Tractatus Logico Philosophicus was published. It revolutionized thinking about logic and language and inaugurated Wittgenstein's reputation as Father of the Linguistic Turn.  After WWI, he left philosophy to teach school children, garden, etc. Then in 1929 he realized that the picture theory of meaning expounded in the Tractatus would need to be revised.  He returned to Cambridge and spent the rest of his life, until 1951, rethinking his ideas on the nature of philosophy, language, and thinking and perception.  The Philosophical Investigations published posthumously is the most complete statement of his later philosophy.