Ludwig Wittgenstein
From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.
“Cadbury's World is all that is the case.”
- ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein on Ludwig Wittgenstein
“His personality consists of two parts. One of which one may speak in public, and one that I'd date anytime”
- ~ Oscar Wilde on Ludwig Wittgenstein
“He called a spade a spade.”
- ~ Bertrand Russell on Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Hieronymus Kashmir Wittgenstein (1889-1951), the "Rock Star of Modern Philosophy". The Philosopher was hot on the epistemological mike and the author of the most important philosophical works ever, which, sadly, no one understands but his now-dead students. Further complicating the matter, all of these works except the last one ("Philosophical Bumbelations", 1953) have been subsequently identified as wrong.
Wittgenstein's work is concerned primarily with the nature of language, something which noted bubblehead Bertrand Russell just doesn't understand.Russell did, however, successfully do a bum rape on him. Wittgenstein identified that the meaning of all words is, when you get right down to it, malleable and resistant to definition, and that this lack of clarity bewitches our minds like salt makes a soup taste salty. His plan, however, was to depend on language to write a lot of stuff about the matter, which is of course the equivalent of relying on salt to remedy a soup that is too salty. Philosophers, meanwhile, haven't noticed yet due to their heartfelt aversion to eating anything they cooked. (Which in these circles is called "abstract thinking", implying that any concrete thinking is something that happens to other people).
Hopscotch, by the way, is analogous to a king making rain, but this is just an example that sheds light on certain connections of one region of language to another. In addition to his philosophical talents, Wittgenstein was an amazing lover, had perfect pitch, and could hum entire David Bowie albums using only his right thumb. He was particularly noted for being of a similar inebrious disposition as Schlegel, though his wrist-raising talents pale in comparison to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
| So I asked her why she couldn't complete a simple logic truth table and she said it was because her brain wasn't in an advanced enough state of cognition. I did the logical thing... | ||
| —Ludwig Wittgenstein on why he broke that little girl's nose | ||
[edit] Young Wittgenstein
Born in 1889 in Vienna, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ludwig Wittgenstein is known as the "Rock Star of Modern Philosophy." The son of a famous Viennese playboy and Simone Weil, Wittgenstein was the 5th of thirteen brothers, all of who were named "Ludwig" and all of whom committed suicide in World War I, the war of the gods. (A 14th brother, organist Paul Wittgenstein, would soon follow.) Not considered much of a brain until he built a steam engine out of toothpicks when he was 10, Wittgenstein spent most of his childhood worrying about being a homosexual Jew. After pissing off Gottlob Frege at the age of 17, he camped outside of Bertrand Russell's rooms at Cambridge University a few years, taking walks and fixing things, until 1914 when he joined the People's Republic of Hooters, a local fraternity chapter.
[edit] Various Wars and Interwar Periods, Also Hitler
In the trenches, Wittgenstein penned the greatest work of philosophy since Plato's Townships and Neighboring Islands, the Tractatus Germanicus-Leviticus. After the war Wittgenstein was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at Cambridge on Russell and Einstein's recommendation. Spurning the love of all Albion, he went into hiding until 1929. During that time, it is rumored that Wittgenstein taught school children advanced mathematics and read only the Bible. Eventually he was tracked down by Frank Ramsey, who put him in chains and brought him back to Cambridge where John Maynard Keynes picked him up, dusted him off, and propped him up against a wall. Soon, Wittgenstein was to attract a cult following.
Special attention is due to Wittgenstein's actions in Word War II, when he was single-handedly responsible for the defeat of the third Reich. Wittgenstein in fact went to kindergarten with Adolph Hitler. Although he had the opportunity, Wittgenstein did not kill Hitler, because Wittgenstein and Hitler were both five years old. Later in his life Ludwig came to bitterly regret missing his opportunity to murder a child and have everybody thank him for it. He would often go on and on about it for hours. Hitler's anti-semitism dates back to his school days with Wittgenstein, when Hitler just couldn't stand Wittgenstein's spiritual resemblance to David Bowie. It was up to Wittgenstein—Russian spy, dream-boat, crack shot with a rifle—to get Europe out of this mess. Wittgenstein and his crack commando team, the Screaming Schwein, single-handedly won World War II. This fact is not generally known. They didn't tell anybody, because they didn't realize it was important. They fought the war with the cool dispassion of a chess master, and took Hitler only because it allowed them to advance a passed pawn to the sixth rank. (See Kimberly Cornish's brilliantly researched The Jew of Linz.)
During this time, Wittgenstein invented the argument known as 'strawfather', which he discovered in ancient philosophy texts, which itself gave birth to the more general 'strawman'. He also claimed to have found the 'strawmother' argument, but many believe this was just a claim to appease the feminists of the time.
[edit] Wittgenstein Dies
“I will throw me into the River Thames. This is, of course, a grammatical remark.”
- ~ Wittgenstein's suicide note, found plastered into his bedroom wall.
Surrounded by a screaming mob of teenage boys until his death in 1951, Wittgenstein spent his time trying to write a book explaining why his previous book was so wrong-headed. This was a very productive activity, and today the majority of his writings exist in facsimile in the basement at Cornell University. The Complete Works are available under the title Finally All My Notes on CD ROM!, the product of thousands of years of painstaking scholarship by teenage boys grown into rather stodgy but loyal men.
Of course Ludwig would say that his death is just a form of behavior, and that, paradoxically dying is just engaging in another 'form of life'. His musings on his death-bed include: 'I wish I'd stayed in engineering', 'I can't believe Bert Russell managed to outlive me, the Great Wittgenstein!', and 'Make sure that Rorty kid doesn't steal all my ideas and pass them off as his own'.
[edit] Powers
| Mercier: Do you feel like singing? Camier: Not to my knowledge | ||
| —Samuel Beckett on Wittgenstein's philosophy | ||
Ludwig Wittgenstein can change colors at will. He can also cause everything in reality (i.e. "The Set of Every Real Object") to change colors while he stays the same color. Paradoxically, to the observer these two acts are indistinguishable. Then he kicks you in the throat. (This is a grammatical remark.)
Ludwig Wittgenstein knows the meanings of words, and will teach them to you by means of a series of examples for a small fee.
Ludwig Wittgenstein has excellent taste in men and clothes.
Ludwig has the power to command the attention of whole British public whenever he arrives.
Ludwig has the power to be wrong, change his mind, and be even more wrong than before.
Ludwig has the ability to make economists think he's a deity.
Ludwig has the power to channel Xeno's socks.
Ludwig is a "language-game" grandmaster. No one has beaten him yet.
Wittgenstein has also given us a part of the philosophical lexicon, namely the word: Ludwit, a verb, which means to witter nostalgically about an old fashioned view of the world, or being able to take a postgraduate course in a subject totally unrelated to your undergraduate degree.
[edit] Philosophy
“Well, that's that!”
~ Wittgenstein on The History of Philosophy
[edit] The Early Period (1889-1923)
So stupid were all philosophers before him, that they were unable to ascertain the real relationship between words and things. Thankfully, Ludwig was polite enough to point this out in the Tractatus. I.e.,
The above is so obviously correct that it gives this biographer the willies to think about what philosophy must have been like before Wittgenstein. I mean obvious, right?
[edit] The Kindergarten Period (1923-1929)
Having solved all of the problems with all language ever, Wittgenstein decided to start his retirement early. He did some work on the side here and there, including teaching kindergarteners at a local school. The stress began to set in when Wittgenstein felt it necessary to jump into the analysis of algebraic series and the children's subsequent failures, in addition to the multitude of tears shed because of Wittgenstein's no-nonsense attitude, therein. As his mind lost grip with reality, Wittgenstein found peace by doing art projects such as Paint-by-Tractatus with his students. One day while painting, the man finally snapped in front of the kindergarteners when he screamed "PROBLEM HERE NOW" and fled the classroom in order to return to Cambridge. Most parents attributed the outburst to Wittgenstein's persistent incompatibility with colours.
[edit] The "Wishy-Washy" Period (1929-1935)
After returning to Cambridge in '29, Wittgenstein couldn't make up his mind about much. What is the meaning of a word? This thought troubled him. Suddenly things began to seem less clear. Wittgenstein was lost on the ice.
[edit] The Late Period (1935-1946)
Around 1935 Wittgenstein finally began to develop the style and clarity that would allow him to complete his Theosophical Investigations. The "remarks style" or "notes style" combines an series of short paragraphs "going ever which-way, going nowhere" (TI Preface). Take, for example, the following three famous passages:
- "Five red apples." (TI 1)
- No!
- Water!
- Ouch!
- Away! (TI 38)
- Forming and testing a hypothesis—
- Making up a story; and reading it—
- Singing catches—
- These, and other things, are called "language." (TI 23)
"I admit the prose could be tighter," Wittgenstein once remarked to his student Hasty Norm.
[edit] The Really Late Period (1946-1951)
[edit] Quotations
[edit] from the Tractatus Carnivorous Somethingwithusus
- 1 The world is whatever is in my briefcase.
- 1.1 It, would, so to speak, appear as an accident, if something were not in the briefcase. (Where else would it be? Might I have left it at home?)
- 1.2 What is in the briefcase is the structure of the proposition.
- 1.21 Logic concerns the structure of the world (C.f. Hertz's mechanics). To learn this structure we should have to step outside the world; i.e. outside the briefcase.
- 2 The limits of my briefcase are the limits of my world.
- 3.11232234722 If the series x,Ω'x,Ω'Ω'x,Ω'Ω'Ω'x,... was in my briefcase, there would not be any room for the razor William of Occam gave me for my birthday.
- 3.112322347221 In taking Occam's Razor out of my briefcase, i.e. out of the world, I could then only show that I had shaved, and could not say that I had done so.
- 9 We could only know a priori that to understand analyses means to know the atomic state of affairs if to understand the form of a false question means to know the tautologies. (It is of the same kind as the question whether the propositions are false).D
- 9.1 The form of a complex tautology is false. (That is the whole theory of things).
[edit] from the Theosophical Investigations
- If a lion found that his spade had turned, how would he make this known to us? Would we understand him? (1000)
- What if he said: "My spade has turned"? This is the sort of thing that is typical. We say to the lion: "You must discard that spade - climb out of it - over it - it is no longer of any use to you." (4)
- Of what kind of use is a spade? Here I want to make a sign that cannot be made with a broken spade. (210)
[edit] from the Finally All My Notes on CD ROM!
- We are struggling with language.
- We are engaged in a struggle with language. (FAMNCR! 402)
- We could say that a 'lanyard', in so far as it is a word in the dictionary, is related to 'knots' in a way that knots('knots') is hetero-logically sound. A grammatical remark: there could be a genitaliac 'root' that could be said to fail only in so far as it fails to do its work in the bushes (a book of jokes)!
[edit] "How to Teach Kids" from The Teaching of Students, and some Remarks
- Whereof one cannot control the class, one must be short-tempered.
- The class is all that is the case.
- Do we sometimes teach because it has been found to pay?
- The limits of my temper, means the limits of my students life-expectancy.
- Teaching kids is a battle against the bewitchment of my intelligence by means of insolence.
[edit] Bibliography
- Tractatus Germanicus-Leviticus, 1924
- "You're All Bloody Idiots: Some Remarks on Ethics", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1930
- The Teaching of Students, and some Remarks, 1940.
- On Certainty, 1942
- Quite Possibly On Certainty, 1943
- Maybe On Something Like Certainty, But I'm Not Sure, 1944
- Bacterial Culture and Use Value, 1950
- The Blue and Brown Books, 1952
- The Yellow Book, 1953
- The Little Black Book, 1954
- The Purple People Eater Book, 1955
- Remarks on Grammar, 1960
- Remarks on Remarks on Grammar, 1962
- Grammatical Remarks, 1970
- Grammatical Remarks on Moore's "I Know This Is My Hand" with Special Attention to Russell, 1975
- Family Resemblances: The Wittgenstein Clan Photo Album, 1976
- Private Language (unpublished notes to self--no translation has been possible), 1979
- Zelig (collaboration with Woody Allen), 1983
- The Investigations
- Theosophical Investigations, 1953
- More Theosophical Investigations, 1958
- Some other Theosophical Investigations, 1961
- Yet another volume of Theosophical Investigations, 1967
- Hey I just noticed something, 1969
- I've Been Doing Some More Investigation, and Y'Know what’s Funny ...?, 1972
- Theosophical Investigations: Greatest Hits, 1977
- Theosophical Investigations: The Complete Collector's Edition (with Wittgenstein action figure!), 1977
- Oh Darn I Forgot Some Investigations, 1978
- Finally All My Investigations on CD ROM! I Think We've Gotten it Together This Time Around, 2000
