On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 10:35:07 -0800 joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net>
writes:
> AN writes:
> "Rumor has it that the cruel and unforgiving one was him,
> not the children."
Well, as I recall part of his difficulties as a school master was that he was a bit too liberal in his use of the cane which was too much even for the local peasants to put up with. He also had a hard time because he had more expansive notions of the sort of education that he wanted to impart to his pupils than was acceptable to their parents or the powers that be in the village in which he was teaching.
> But Russell seduced him back to
> Cambrisge, and philosophy, and we got the Phil.
> Investigations and various other things out of it. jks
>
> Possibly true. There was a book, "Wittgenstein's Vienna" that
> provides a sort of cultural biography. There's nothing in that which
> contradicts the above. He was terminally weird. But he was also, one
> of the most (if not the most) perceptive and useful philosophers of
> the 20 century. I'm not thinking of the "Tractatus" which he
> repudiated, but of the "Philosophical Investigations," which is a
> really great book -- well worth reading by anyone pursuing any kind
> of linguistically-based discipline.
>
> "Anyways, in the context of lbo-talk there are two things
> one must know about Ludwig Wittgenstein. First, he was
> the son of a very successful (and much hated) corporate
> raider. Second, he was a schoolmate of Adolf Hitler."
Some people have claimed that Hitler made a vague sort of reference to him in *Mein Kampf* where he apparently did make reference to a Jewish student at his school of whom Hitler wrote "we did not particularly trust..." However, it is by no means certain whether or not Hitler was referring to Wittgenstein or someone else.
>
> Yes, he grew up in a very rich family.
His father, Karl Wittgenstein was the founder of the Austrian steel industry, he was basically the Andrew Carnegie of Central Europe, and was certainly one of the wealthiest men in Europe.
> Also noteworthy: he gave all
> his money away...and some of it to make it possible for artists to
> do their work: one such being Rilke. I don't know what to make for
> the fact that he was a schoolmate of Adolf Hitler??? Hitler had a
> lot of schoolmates...
Other noteworthy facts about Wiitgenstein include his leftist, pro-Soviet politics. Indeed, according to Ray Monk's biography of him, Wittgenstein at one point had his friend, John Maynard Keynes, sound out contacts at the Soviet embassy in London, about his possible emigration there. Wittgenstein's attempt to emigrate to the Soviet Union eventually fell through because he wanted to go there as a manual worker, or barring that he was willing to attend medical school, so that he could go and work there as a physician. The Soviets, on the other hand, were interested in having him come there to be a philosophy lecturer, which Wittgenstein seemed to consider to be a fate worse than death. So he never emigrated there.
Wittgenstein was close to a number of Marxist or semi-Marxist academics including the economist Pierro Sraffa, the Marxist economist, Maurice Dobb, and the historian, Christopher Hill.
>
> Joanna
>
>
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>
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