Ludwig Wittgenstein

Improve yourself, that is all you can do to improve the world.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

I recently read the biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein by Ray Monk. It is simple to describe who Wittgenstein was. He was to philosophy what Einstein was to Physics, at about the same time. You might have heard Talent does what it can, Genius what it must. We find the most powerful expression of that 'must' in Wittgenstein's life (another would be Ramanujan's). Consider this, he constantly contemplated suicide before Bertrand Russell convinced him that he possessed philosophical genius, and hence (to his own mind) he was worthy of living. His best known work is the Tractatus. In essence, it says the structure of a propostion is similar to the structure of the reality that it describes, that is what makes it describe that reality (of course this is an imprecise approximation, but I hope it is not entirely misleading). But in later life he became dissatisfied with it. Instead of the traditional, analytic way in which all the leading practitoners (including Russell) did philosophy, he proposed that philosophical problems arise because of our confused use of language, and a proper treatment of these problems would make philosophy itself unncessary.

There is much else remarkable about Wittgenstein's life. Having come from a very prosperous family, he abandoned all of it to live on what he himself could make. Having volunteered for service in WWI, he tried (and succeeded) in getting himself transferred to the front, reasoning that a brush with death would make him a better person. I think you see the intensity behind the opening quote now.

There are books, and then there are books that push everything else aside. This definitely belongs in the later category. But why some books have this effect and not others? I leave you with what the Tractatus has to say

Anything that can at all be said can be said clearly; whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.