Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( VIT-gən-s(h)tyne; Austrian German: [ˈluːdvɪç ˈjoːsɛf ˈjoːhan ˈvɪtɡn̩ʃtaɪn]; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austro-British philosopher who worked in logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. Wittgenstein was born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families. From 1911 to 1913, he studied at the University of Cambridge under Bertrand Russell, and interacted closely with others including John Maynard Keynes and G. E. Moore. During this time, he inherited a fortune, part of which he donated to various poets and artists. He also began what would become his first important philosophical work. However, at the start of World War I, he left academia to enlist in the Austro-Hungarian Army. After a series of personal adversities—including the death of his older brother by suicide (the third of his older brothers to die by suicide during his lifetime), the death of his close friend and lover David Pinsent, and his imprisonment in an Italian prisoner of war camp—he was led to a state of depression, and gave away his remaining fortune to his siblings. He worked as a schoolteacher around Vienna. Despite these setbacks, his philosophical work was published in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921, followed by an English translation in 1922 with help from Frank P. Ramsey, to considerable discussion and acclaim. At the encouragement of Russell, Keynes, and Ramsey, Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge, where he taught from 1930 to 1947, giving lectures on philosophy, often permeated by his original research. During World War II, he left academia again to work at the Guy's Hospital in London and at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne. Wittgenstein would not publish another philosophical work during his lifetime, but following his death in 1951, his voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein's philosophy is often divided into an early period, exemplified by the Tractatus, and a later period, articulated primarily in the Philosophical Investigations. The "early Wittgenstein" was concerned with the logical relationship between propositions and the world, and he believed that by providing an account of the logic underlying this relationship, he had solved all philosophical problems. The "later Wittgenstein" rejected many of the assumptions of the Tractatus, arguing that the meaning of words is best understood as their use within a given language game. Wittgenstein was well regarded among academics during his lifetime, and was decorated for his courage during World War I. However, he encountered controversy during his time teaching for his use of violent corporal punishment on girls and boys (see the Haidbauer incident). His work (both early and later) has been described as controversial and sparked a number of different reactions. Later philosophers and commentators have generally agreed that he is one of the most important figures in 20th-century philosophy.
Background
The Wittgensteins
According to a family tree prepared in Jerusalem after World War II, Wittgenstein's paternal great-great-grandfather was Moses Meier, an Ashkenazi Jewish land agent who lived with his wife, Brendel Simon, in Bad Laasphe in the Principality of Wittgenstein, Westphalia. In July 1808, Napoleon issued a decree that everyone, including Jews, must adopt an inheritable family surname, so Meier's son, also Moses, took the name of his employers, the Sayn-Wittgensteins, and became Moses Meier Wittgenstein. His son, Hermann Christian Wittgenstein — who took the middle name "Christian" to distance himself from his Jewish background — married Fanny Figdor, also Jewish, who converted to Protestantism just before they married, and the couple founded a successful business trading in wool in Leipzig. Ludwig's grandmother Fanny was a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachim. They had 11 children – among them Wittgenstein's father. Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein (1847–1913) became an industrial tycoon, and by the late 1880s was one of the richest men in Europe, with an effective monopoly on Austria's steel cartel. Thanks to Karl, the Wittgensteins became the second wealthiest family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, only the Rothschilds being wealthier. Karl Wittgenstein was viewed as the Austrian equivalent of Andrew Carnegie, with whom he was friends, and was one of the wealthiest men in the world by the 1890s. As a result of his decision in 1898 to invest substantially in the Netherlands and in Switzerland as well as overseas, particularly in the US, the family was to an extent shielded from the hyperinflation that hit Austria in 1922. However, their wealth diminished due to post-1918 hyperinflation and subsequently during the Great Depression, although even as late as 1938 they owned 13 mansions in Vienna alone.
Early life
Wittgenstein was ethnically Jewish. His mother was Leopoldine Maria Josefa Kalmus, known among friends as "Poldi". Her father was a Bohemian Jew, and her mother was an Austrian-Slovene Catholic—she was Wittgenstein's only non-Jewish grandparent. Poldi was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on his maternal side. Wittgenstein was born at 8:30 pm on 26 April 1889 in the "Villa Wittgenstein" at what became Neuwaldegger Straße 38 in the suburban parish Neuwaldegg outside Vienna.
Karl and Poldi had nine children in all—four girls: Hermine, Margaret (Gretl), Helene, and a fourth daughter Dora who died as a baby; and five boys: Johannes (Hans), Kurt, Rudolf (Rudi), Paul—who became a concert pianist despite losing an arm in World War I—and Ludwig, who was the youngest of the family.
Wittgenstein and his siblings were brought up in the Roman Catholic faith of their mother. The family was at the centre of Vienna's cultural life; Bruno Walter described the life at the Wittgensteins' palace as an "all-pervading atmosphere of humanity and culture". Karl was a leading patron of the arts, commissioning works by Auguste Rodin and financing the city's exhibition hall and art gallery, the Secession Building. Gustav Klimt painted a portrait of Wittgenstein's sister Margaret for her wedding, and Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler gave regular concerts in the family's numerous music rooms. According to John King, Wittgenstein "was always immaculately neat and tidy, small of stature and with piercing blue eyes under a shock of curly hair."
Wittgenstein, who valued precision and discipline, never considered contemporary classical music acceptable. He said to his friend Drury in 1930: Music came to a full stop with Brahms; and even in Brahms I can begin to hear the noise of machinery. Ludwig Wittgenstein himself had absolute pitch, and his devotion to music remained vitally important to him throughout his life; he made frequent use of musical examples and metaphors in his philosophical writings, and he was unusually adept at whistling lengthy and detailed musical passages. He was known as a amazing whistler, a talent he developed as a boy while his brothers played instruments as children. Wittgenstein would give tips to other whistlers if they were off tune. He learnt to play the clarinet in his 30s. A fragment of music (three bars), composed by Wittgenstein, was discovered in one of his 1931 notebooks, by Michael Nedo, director of the Wittgenstein Institute in Cambridge.
Family temperament and brothers' suicides
Ray Monk writes that Karl's aim was to turn his sons into captains of industry; they were not sent to school lest they acquire bad habits but were educated at home to prepare them for work in Karl's industrial empire. Three of the five brothers later committed suicide. Psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald argues that Karl was a harsh perfectionist who lacked empathy, and that Wittgenstein's mother was anxious and insecure, unable to stand up to her husband. Johannes Brahms said of the family, whom he visited regularly: They seemed to act towards one another as if they were at court.The family appeared to have a strong streak of depression running through it. Anthony Gottlieb tells a story about Paul practising on one of the pianos in the Wittgensteins' main family mansion, when he suddenly shouted at Ludwig in the next room:I cannot play when you are in the house, as I feel your skepticism seeping towards me from under the door!
The family palace housed seven grand pianos and each of the siblings pursued music "with an enthusiasm that, at times, bordered on the pathological". The eldest brother, Hans, was hailed as a musical prodigy. At the age of four, writes Alexander Waugh, Hans could identify the Doppler effect in a passing siren as a quarter-tone drop in pitch, and at five started crying "Wrong! Wrong!" when two brass bands in a carnival played the same tune in different keys. But he died in mysterious circumstances in May 1902, when he ran away to the US and disappeared from a boat in Chesapeake Bay, most likely having committed suicide.
Two years later, aged 22 and studying chemistry at the Berlin Academy, the third eldest brother, Rudi, committed suicide in a Berlin bar. He had asked the pianist to play Thomas Koschat's "Verlassen, verlassen, verlassen bin ich" ("Forsaken, forsaken, forsaken am I"), before mixing himself a drink of milk and potassium cyanide. He had left several suicide notes, one to his parents that said he was grieving over the death of a friend, and another that referred to his "perverted disposition". It was reported at the time that he had sought advice from the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, an organization that was campaigning against Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which prohibited homosexual sex. His father forbade the family from ever mentioning his name again. (Ludwig also may have been a closeted homosexual, who separated sexual intercourse from love, despising all forms of the former.) The second eldest brother, Kurt, an officer and company director, shot himself on 27 October 1918, just before the end of World War I, when the Austrian troops he was commanding refused to obey his orders and deserted en masse. Hermine had said Kurt seemed to carry "the germ of disgust for life within himself". Later, Ludwig wrote:I ought to have ... become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth.
1903–1906: Secondary school
Realschule in Linz
Insistent that they be entirely home-schooled by tutors like their siblings, Karl Wittgenstein had prevented his youngest sons Paul and Ludwig from attending secondary school. After the 1902 disappearance (and presumed suicide) of Hans and the ensuing tensions at home, he finally relented. Unlike Paul, Wittgenstein failed the entrance examination to the more academic Gymnasium in Wiener Neustadt. He only barely managed, after extra tutoring, to pass the exam for the more technically oriented Imperial and Royal Realschule in Linz, a small state secondary school of some 300 pupils. In 1903, when he was 14, he began his three years of formal schooling there, lodging nearby during the term with the family of Josef Strigl, a teacher at the local gymnasium, the family giving him the nickname Luki. Adolf Hitler was a fellow pupil and of the same age but was never in the same class, because he had been made to repeat his 1900/1901 first year. Placed two grades above Hitler, it is thought Wittgenstein was also moved forward a year. Hitler left Linz in 1904 to spend the 1904/1905 academic year at the Realschule in Steyr. As Ray Monk and Hans Sluga note, there is no evidence the two ever had anything to do with each other during the year that they overlapped, 1903–1904. Wittgenstein's brother Rudi died by suicide on 2 May 1904, and this resulted in his missing many classes during the remainder of the academic year and the one that followed.
Historian Brigitte Hamann writes that he stood out from the other boys, because he spoke an unusually pure form of High German with a stutter, dressed elegantly, and was sensitive and unsociable. Monk writes that the other boys made fun of him, singing after him, "Wittgenstein wandelt wehmütig widriger Winde wegen Wienwärts" (Wittgenstein wanders wistfully Vienna-wards [in] worsening winds). In his leaving certificate, he received a top mark—a 5—in religious studies; a 2 for conduct and English; 3s for French, geography, history, mathematics, and physics; and 4s for German, chemistry, geometry, and freehand drawing. He had particular difficulty with spelling and failed his written German exam because of it. He wrote in 1931:My bad spelling in youth, up to the age of about 18 or 19, is connected with the whole of the rest of my character (my weakness in study).
Faith Wittgenstein was baptized as an infant by a Catholic priest and received formal instruction in Catholic doctrine as a child. In an interview, his sister Gretl Stonborough-Wittgenstein says that their grandfather's "strong, severe, partly ascetic Christianity" was a strong influence on all the Wittgenstein children. While he was at the Realschule, he decided he lacked religious faith. He nevertheless believed in the importance of the practice of confession. He wrote in his diaries that he had made some confessions to his oldest sister, Hermine, while he was at the Realschule; Monk speculates that it may have been about his loss of faith. He also discussed it with Gretl, his other sister, and began reading Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation per Gretl's recommendation. As a teenager, Wittgenstein adopted Schopenhauer's epistemological idealism. However, after he studied the philosophy of mathematics, he abandoned epistemological idealism for Gottlob Frege's conceptual realism. In later years, Wittgenstein was highly dismissive of Schopenhauer, describing him as an ultimately "shallow" thinker:
One could call Schopenhauer a quite crude mind.... Where real depth starts, his finishes. Wittgenstein's engagement with Christianity and religion in general, to which he consistently expressed sincere and devoted sympathy, evolved, much as his philosophical outlook did. In 1912, Wittgenstein wrote to Bertrand Russell saying that Mozart and Beethoven were the 'actual' sons of God. However, Wittgenstein resisted organized religion, saying it was hard for him to "bend the knee", though his grandfather's beliefs continued to influence Wittgenstein—as he said, "I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view." Wittgenstein referred to Augustine of Hippo in his Philosophical Investigations. Philosophically, Wittgenstein's thought shows alignment with religious discourse. For example, he would become one of the century's fiercest critics of scientism.
Wittgenstein's religious belief emerged during his service for the Austrian army in World War I, and he was a devoted reader of Fyodor Dostoevsky's and Leo Tolstoy's religious writings. He viewed his wartime experiences as a trial in which he strove to conform to the will of God, and in a journal entry from 29 April 1915, he writes: Perhaps the nearness of death will bring me the light of life. May God enlighten me. I am a worm, but through God I become a man. God be with me. Amen. Around this time, Wittgenstein wrote that "Christianity is indeed the only sure way to happiness", but he rejected the idea that religious belief was merely thinking that a certain doctrine was true. From this time on, Wittgenstein viewed religious faith as a way of living and opposed rational argumentation or proofs for the existence of God. With age, a deepening personal spirituality led to several elucidations and clarifications, as he untangled language problems in religion—attacking, for example, the temptation to think of God's existence as a matter of scientific evidence. In 1947, finding it rather difficult to work, he wrote:I have had a letter from an old friend in Austria, a priest. In it he says that he hopes my work will go well, if it should be God's will. Now that is all I want: if it should be God's will. In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein writes: Is what I am doing (my work in philosophy) really worth the effort? Yes, but only if a light shines on it from above. His close friend Norman Malcolm wrote:Wittgenstein's mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling. I am inclined to think that he was more deeply religious than are many people who correctly regard themselves as religious believers. Toward the end, Wittgenstein wrote:Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein, "To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby". That is what I would have liked to say about my work.
Influence of Otto Weininger
While a student at the Realschule, Wittgenstein was influenced by Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger's 1903 book Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character). Weininger, who was Jewish, argued that the concepts of male and female exist only as Platonic forms and that Jews tend to embody the form of Platonic femininity. Furthermore, he argued, whereas men are basically rational, women operate only at the level of their emotions and sexual organs. Jews, Weininger contended, are similar, saturated with femininity, with no sense of right and wrong, and no soul. Weininger argues that man must choose between his masculine and feminine sides, consciousness and unconsciousness, Platonic love and sexuality. Love and sexual desire stand in contradiction, and love between a woman and a man is therefore doomed to misery or immorality. The only life worth living is the spiritual one—to live as a woman or a Jew means one has no right to live at all; the choice is genius or death. Weininger committed suicide, shooting himself in 1903, shortly after publishing the book. Wittgenstein, then 14, attended Weininger's funeral. Many years later, as a professor at the University of Cambridge, Wittgenstein distributed copies of Weininger's book to his bemused academic colleagues. He said that Weininger's arguments were wrong, but that it was the way they were wrong that was interesting. In a letter dated 23 August 1931, Wittgenstein wrote the following to G. E. Moore:
Dear Moore,Thanks for your letter. I can quite imagine that you don't admire Weininger very much, what with that beastly translation and the fact that W. must feel very foreign to you. It is true that he is fantastic but he is great and fantastic. It isn't necessary or rather not possible to agree with him but the greatness lies in that with which we disagree. It is his enormous mistake which is great. I.e. roughly speaking if you just add a "~" to the whole book it says an important truth. In an unusual move, Wittgenstein took out a copy of Weininger's work on 1 June 1931 from the special order books section in the university library. He met Moore on 2 June, when he probably gave Moore this copy.
Jewishness There is much discussion regarding the extent to which Wittgenstein and his siblings—who were of three-quarters Jewish descent—saw themselves, were, and were seen, as Jews. In his notebooks of around 1929–1931, Wittgenstein frequently referred to himself as Jewish, often in a self-deprecating manner. For instance, while criticizing himself for being a "reproductive" rather than a "productive" thinker, he wrote: "The saint is the only Jewish 'genius'. Even the greatest Jewish thinker is no more than talented. (Myself for instance.)"
Wittgenstein would later, in a 1949 conversation with his friend Drury, claim that "[m]y thoughts are one hundred percent Hebraic". If so, Hans Sluga has argued,his was a profoundly self-doubting Judaism, which had always the possibility of collapsing into a destructive self-hatred (as it did in Weininger's case) but which also held an immense promise of innovation and genius. Although by "Hebraic", Sluga later contended, Wittgenstein meant to include the Christian tradition that descended from Judaism, in contradistinction to the Greek tradition, holding that good and evil could not be reconciled.
1906–1913: University
Engineering at Berlin and Manchester
Wittgenstein began his studies in mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule Berlin in Charlottenburg, Berlin, on 23 October 1906, lodging with the family of Professor Jolles. He attended for three semesters, and was awarded a diploma (Abgangzeugnis) on 5 May 1908. During his time at the Institute, Wittgenstein developed an interest in aeronautics. He arrived at the Victoria University of Manchester in the spring of 1908 to study for a doctorate, full of plans for aeronautical projects, including designing and flying his own plane. He conducted research into the behaviour of kites in the upper atmosphere, experimenting at a meteorological observation site near Glossop in Derbyshire. Specifically, the Royal Meteorological Society researched and investigated the ionization of the upper atmosphere, by suspending instruments on balloons or kites. At Glossop, Wittgenstein worked under Professor of Physics Sir Arthur Schuster. Wittgenstein worked on the design of a propeller with small jet (tip jet) engines on the end of its blades, something he patented in 1911, and that earned him a research studentship from the university in the autumn of 1908. At the time, contemporary propeller designs were not advanced enough to actually put Wittgenstein's ideas into practice, and it would be years before a blade design that could support Wittgenstein's innovative design was created. Wittgenstein's design required air and gas to be forced along the propeller arms to combustion chambers on the end of each blade, where they were then compressed by the centrifugal force exerted by the revolving arms and ignited. Propellers of the time were typically wood, whereas modern blades are made from pressed steel laminates as separate halves, which are then welded together. This gives the blade a hollow interior and thereby creates an ideal pathway for the air and gas.
Work on the jet-powered propeller proved frustrating for Wittgenstein, who had very little experience working with machinery. Jim Bamber, a British engineer who was his friend and classmate at the time, reported that when things went wrong, which often occurred, he would throw his arms around, stomp about, and swear volubly in German.According to William Eccles, another friend from that period, Wittgenstein then turned to more theoretical work, focusing on the design of the propeller – a problem that required relatively sophisticated mathematics. It was at this time that he became interested in the foundations of mathematics, particularly after reading Bertrand Russell's The Principles of Mathematics (1903), and Gottlob Frege's The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, vol. 1 (1893) and vol. 2 (1903). Wittgenstein's sister Hermine said he became obsessed with mathematics as a result, and was anyway losing interest in aeronautics. He decided instead that he needed to study logic and the foundations of mathematics, describing himself as in a "constant, indescribable, almost pathological state of agitation". In the summer of 1911 he visited Frege at the University of Jena to show him some philosophy of mathematics and logic he had written, and to ask whether it was worth pursuing. He wrote: I was shown into Frege's study. Frege was a small, neat man with a pointed beard who bounced around the room as he talked. He absolutely wiped the floor with me, and I felt very depressed; but at the end he said 'You must come again', so I cheered up. I had several discussions with him after that. Frege would never talk about anything but logic and mathematics, if I started on some other subject, he would say something polite and then plunge back into logic and mathematics.
Arrival at Cambridge
Wittgenstein wanted to study with Frege, but Frege suggested he attend the University of Cambridge to study under Russell, so on 18 October 1911 Wittgenstein arrived unannounced at Russell's rooms in Trinity College. Russell was having tea with C. K. Ogden, when, according to Russell, an unknown German [sic] appeared, speaking very little English but refusing to speak German. He turned out to be a man who had learned engineering at Charlottenburg, but during this course had acquired, by himself, a passion for the philosophy of mathematics & has now come to Cambridge on purpose to hear me.He was soon not only attending Russell's lectures but dominating them. The lectures were poorly attended and Russell often found himself lecturing only to C. D. Broad, E. H. Neville, and H. T. J. Norton. Wittgenstein started following him after lectures back to his rooms to discuss more philosophy, until it was time for the evening meal in Hall. Russell grew irritated; he wrote to his lover Lady Ottoline Morrell: "My German friend threatens to be an infliction." Russell soon came to believe that Wittgenstein was a genius, especially after he had examined Wittgenstein's written work. He wrote in November 1911 that he had at first thought Wittgenstein might be a crank, but soon decided he was a genius: Some of his early views made the decision difficult. He maintained, for example, at one time that all existential propositions are meaningless. This was in a lecture room, and I invited him to consider the proposition: 'There is no hippopotamus in this room at present.' When he refused to believe this, I looked under all the desks without finding one; but he remained unconvinced. Three months after Wittgenstein's arrival Russell told Morrell:I love him & feel he will solve the problems I am too old to solve ... He is the young man one hopes for. Wittgenstein later told David Pinsent that Russell's encouragement had proven his salvation, and had ended nine years of loneliness and suffering, during which he had continually thought of suicide. In encouraging him to pursue philosophy and in justifying his inclination to abandon engineering, Russell had, quite literally, saved Wittgenstein's life. The role-reversal between Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein was soon such that Russell wrote in 1916 after Wittgenstein had criticized Russell's own work:His [Wittgenstein's] criticism, tho' I don't think you realized it at the time, was an event of first-rate importance in my life, and affected everything I have done since. I saw that he was right, and I saw that I could not hope ever again to do fundamental work in philosophy.
Cambridge Moral Sciences Club
In 1912 Wittgenstein joined the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, an influential discussion group for philosophy dons and students, delivering his first paper there on 29 November that year, a four-minute talk defining philosophy as "all those primitive propositions which are assumed as true without proof by the various sciences". Wittgenstein left Cambridge in 1913, but would return to Cambridge in 1929 and resume attending meetings.
Cambridge Apostles The economist John Maynard Keynes also invited him to join the Cambridge Apostles, an elite secret society formed in 1820, which both Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore had joined as students, but Wittgenstein did not greatly enjoy it and attended only infrequently. Russell had been worried that Wittgenstein would not appreciate the group's raucous style of intellectual debate, its precious sense of humour, and the fact that the members were often in love with one another. He was admitted in 1912 but resigned almost immediately because he could not tolerate the style of discussion. Nevertheless, the Cambridge Apostles allowed Wittgenstein to participate in meetings again in the 1920s when he returned to Cambridge. Reportedly, Wittgenstein also had trouble tolerating the discussions in the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club.
Frustrations at Cambridge Wittgenstein was quite vocal about his depression in his years at Cambridge and before he went to war; on many occasions, he told Russell of his woes. His mental anguish seemed to stem from two sources: his work and his personal life. Wittgenstein made numerous remarks to Russell about logic driving him mad. Wittgenstein also said to Russell that he "felt the curse of those who have half a talent". He later told of being in mediocre spirits due to his lack of progress in his logical work. Monk writes that Wittgenstein lived and breathed logic, and a temporary lack of inspiration plunged him into despair. Wittgenstein told of his work in logic affecting his mental state in an extreme way. However, he also told Russell another story. Around Christmas, in 1913, he wrote: how can I be a logician before I'm a human being? For the most important thing is coming to terms with myself! He also told Russell that he was worried about logic and his sins, and upon arriving in Russell's rooms one night, he announced to Russell that he would kill himself once he left. Ludwig's temperament was also recorded in the diary of David Pinsent. Pinsent wrote I have to be frightfully careful and tolerant when he gets these sulky fits and I am afraid he is in an even more sensitive neurotic state just now than usual when talking about Wittgenstein's emotional fluctuations.
Sexual orientation and relationship with David Pinsent
Wittgenstein had romantic relations with both men and women. He is generally believed to have fallen in love with at least three men, and had a relationship with the latter two: David Hume Pinsent in 1912, Francis Skinner in 1930, and Ben Richards in the late 1940s. He later claimed that, as a teenager in Vienna, he had had an affair with a woman. Additionally, in the 1920s Wittgenstein fell in love with a young Swiss woman, Marguerite Respinger, sculpting a bust modelled on her and seriously considering marriage, albeit on condition that they would not have children; she decided that he was not right for her.
Wittgenstein's relationship with David Pinsent occurred during an intellectually formative period and is well documented. Bertrand Russell introduced Wittgenstein to Pinsent in the summer of 1912. Pinsent was a mathematics undergraduate and a relation of David Hume. Wittgenstein and he soon became very close. The men worked together on experiments in the psychology laboratory about the role of rhythm in the appreciation of music, and Wittgenstein delivered a paper on the subject to the British Psychological Association in Cambridge in 1912. They also travelled together, including to Iceland in September 1912—the expenses paid by Wittgenstein, including first class travel, the hiring of a private train, and new clothes and spending money for Pinsent. In addition to Iceland, Wittgenstein and Pinsent travelled to Norway in 1913. In determining their destination, Wittgenstein and Pinsent visited a tourist office in search of a location that would fulfil the following criteria: a small village located on a fjord, a location away from tourists, and a peaceful destination to allow them to study logic and law.
Choosing Øystese, Wittgenstein and Pinsent arrived in the small village on 4 September 1913. During a vacation lasting almost three weeks, Wittgenstein was able to work vigorously on his studies. The immense progress on logic during their stay led Wittgenstein to express to Pinsent his notion of leaving Cambridge and returning to Norway to continue his work on logic. Pinsent's diaries provide valuable insights into Wittgenstein's personality: sensitive, nervous, and attuned to the tiniest slight or change in mood from Pinsent. Pinsent also writes of Wittgenstein being "absolutely sulky and snappish" at times, as well. In his diaries Pinsent wrote about shopping for furniture with Wittgenstein in Cambridge when the latter was given rooms in Trinity. Most of what they found in the stores was not minimalist enough for Wittgenstein's aesthetics: I went and helped him interview a lot of furniture at various shops ... It was rather amusing: He is terribly fastidious and we led the shopman a frightful dance, Vittgenstein [sic] ejaculating "No – Beastly!" to 90 percent of what he shewed us!He wrote in May 1912 that Wittgenstein had just begun to study the history of philosophy: He expresses the most naive surprise that all the philosophers he once worshipped in ignorance are after all stupid and dishonest and make disgusting mistakes!The last time they saw each other was on 8 October 1913 at Lordswood House in Birmingham, then residence of the Pinsent family: I got up at 6:15 to see Ludwig off. He had to go very early—back to Cambridge—as he has lots to do there. I saw him off from the house in a taxi at 7:00—to catch a 7:30 am train from New Street Station. It was sad parting from him.Wittgenstein left to live in Norway.
1913–1920: World War I and writing of the Tractatus
Work on Logik
Karl Wittgenstein died on 20 January 1913, and after receiving his inheritance Ludwig became one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He "made a very generous financial bequest to a group of poets and artists chosen by Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of Der Brenner, from artists in need. These included [Georg] Trakl as well as Rainer Maria Rilke and the architect Adolf Loos", and also the painter Oskar Kokoschka. Trakl requested to meet his benefactor but in 1914 when Wittgenstein went to visit, Trakl had killed himself. "In autumn 1916, as his sister reported, 'Ludwig made a donation of a million crowns [equivalent to about $3.7 million in 2025] for the construction of a 30 cm mortar.'" Wittgenstein came to feel that he could not get to the heart of his most fundamental questions while surrounded by other academics, and so in 1913, he retreated to the village of Skjolden in Norway, where he rented the second floor of a house for the winter. He later saw this as one of the most productive periods of his life, writing Logik (Notes on Logic), the predecessor of much of the Tractatus.
While in Norway, Wittgenstein learned Norwegian to converse with the local villagers, and Danish to read the works of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He adored the "quiet seriousness" of the landscape but even Skjolden became too busy for him. He soon designed a small wooden house which was erected on a remote rock overlooking the Eidsvatnet Lake just outside the village. The place was called "Østerrike" (Austria) by locals. He lived there during various periods until the 1930s, and substantial parts of his works were written there. It was during this time that Wittgenstein began addressing what he considered to be a central issue in Notes on Logic, a general decision procedure for determining the truth value of logical propositions that would stem from a single primitive proposition. He became convinced during this time that All the propositions of logic are generalizations of tautologies and all generalizations of tautologies are propositions of logic. There are no other logical propositions. Based on this, Wittgenstein argued that propositions of logic express their truth or falsehood in the sign itself, and one need not know anything about the constituent parts of the proposition to determine it true or false. Rather, one simply needs to identify the statement as a tautology (true), a contradiction (false), or neither. The problem lay in forming a primitive proposition that encompassed this and would act as the basis for all of logic. As he stated in correspondence with Russell in late 1913, The big question now is, how must a system of signs be constituted in order to make every tautology recognizable as such IN ONE AND THE SAME WAY? This is the fundamental problem of logic!The importance Wittgenstein placed upon this fundamental problem was so great that he believed if he did not solve it, he had no right or desire to live. Despite this apparent life-or-death importance, Wittgenstein had given up on this primitive proposition by the time he wrote the Tractatus. The Tractatus does not offer any general process for identifying propositions as tautologies but simply asserts, Every tautology itself shows that it is a tautology. This shift to understanding tautologies through mere identification or recognition occurred in 1914 when Wittgenstein asked Moore to assist him in dictating his notes. At Wittgenstein's insistence, Moore, who was now a Cambridge don, visited him in Norway in April 1914, reluctantly because Wittgenstein exhausted him. David Edmonds and John Eidinow write that Wittgenstein regarded Moore, an internationally known philosopher, as an example of how far someone could get in life with "absolutely no intelligence whatever". In Norway it was clear that Moore was expected to act as Wittgenstein's secretary, taking down his notes, with Wittgenstein falling into a rage when Moore got something wrong. Brian McGuinness notes that a letter from Wittgenstein to Moore of 7 May 1914 indicates that he had intended to submit an essay he referred to as "Logik" as the dissertation required for his completion of a bachelor's degree. McGuinness asserts that the essay is unlikely to be identical with "Notes on Logic" but suggests it is at least summarised in "Notes dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway" (published in Appendix II of Notebooks 1914–1916) and that "much speaks" for the supposition that it was indeed these notes that Wittgenstein had intended to submit. According to the relevant regulations, however, such a dissertation had to contain a preface and notes in which the student stated the sources on which he had relied and the extent to which he had done so, qualities lacking in Wittgenstein's essay. Moore, though himself secretary of the relevant Moral Sciences degrees committee, showed the essay to Walter Morley Fletcher – perhaps, McGuinness suggests, "for an impartial opinion from an outsider" – and had "been told that it could not possibly pass for a dissertation" and wrote to Wittgenstein accordingly,
Wittgenstein was furious, writing to Moore: If I am not worth your making an exception for me even in some STUPID details then I may as well go to HELL directly; and if I am worth it and you don't do it then – by God – you might go there.Moore was apparently distraught; writing in his diary that he felt sick and could not get the letter out of his head. Wittgenstein wrote to Moore in July of that year conceding that he had "probably no sufficient reason to write to you as I did" but the two did not speak again until 1929.
Military service
On the outbreak of World War I, Wittgenstein immediately volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian Army, despite being eligible for a medical exemption. He served first on a ship and then in an artillery workshop "several miles from the action". He was wounded in an accidental explosion, and hospitalised to Kraków. In March 1916, he was posted to a fighting unit on the front line of the Russian front, as part of the Austrian 7th Army, where his unit was involved in some of the heaviest fighting, defending against the Brusilov Offensive. Wittgenstein directed the fire of his own artillery from an observation post in no-man's land against Allied troops—one of the most dangerous jobs since he was targeted by enemy fire. He was decorated with the Military Merit Medal with Swords on the Ribbon, and was commended by the army for "exceptionally courageous behaviour, calmness, sang-froid, and heroism" that "won the total admiration of the troops". In January 1917, Wittgenstein was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian front, where he won several more medals for bravery including the Silver Medal for Valour, First Class. In 1918, he was promoted to lieutenant and sent to the Italian front as part of an artillery regiment. For his part in the final Austrian offensive of June 1918, he was recommended for the Gold Medal for Valour, one of the highest honours in the Austrian army, but was instead awarded the Ban