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>
>not to forget dedekind. but i write this note to opine that W
>calling russell a fool can be excused on the basis of familiarity,
>but russell's achievements in the foundations of math are (if
>behind him at the time of W's statement) formidable.
Oh, W knew _that_; it wasn't because of a low estimate of Russel as a logician that he thought him a fool, but because R was deeply committedto everything about philosophy that W thought was problematic, and R was tempermentantally inacapable of understanding why W thought it was problematic.
Btw, though I can't get into this, I seem to have been unclear and mislead Ken Hanly in my remarks. W was influenced strong by Kierkegaard more than Kant, though everyone in Europe grew up on Kant. The Tractatus is full of metaphysics--nor classic body and soul stuff, but a metaphysics of facts ("The world is all that is the case"; "The world is totality of facts"--what's that if not metaphysics?). The empirical/logical distinction Ken sees there and ascribes to the empiricists is pure Kant, who did get it in part from Hume; but you have to take it with its Kantian flavor. And you can't blow off the mysticism in W but saying that you can't say anything about it (Frank Ramsey's response, "What you can't say you can't say, and you can't whistle it either!"). It's a major distinction between empiricism of any sort and Tractarian W that the empiricists are not bothered by being unable to say what you can't say, and indeed, are interested in stopping people from saying what you can say, but W is tormented and agaonized by not being able to say things that he feels are tremendously important. --jks
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