Austrian-born Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889−1951) is considered one of the most significant of all modern philosophers. While it may be difficult for a layperson to understand what makes philosophical works significant, Gottlieb, with his extensive background in the history of philosophy, is a good guide. In addition, he’s refreshingly honest, willing to present his subject’s contradictions without tidying them up for posterity.
And the contradictions abound. Consider Wittgenstein’s religious identity. Ludwig’s paternal grandparents had converted to Christianity and his siblings leaned Christian, at least in the cultural sense. When the Nazis reclassified them all as Jewish, some family members arranged the necessary bribes to redefine the whole family as “German-blooded.” This did not sit well with Ludwig, who promptly decided to re-Judaize himself.
Then there’s Ludwig’s scholarly work, much of which focused on linguistic clarity — what people communicate with language. One might expect that he himself would have been a skillful communicator. But it turns out that most of the people he loved passionately actually had no clue as to his feelings. An intellectual, a philosopher no less, he periodically immersed himself in the most manual work he could find — such as gardening or working as a hospital dispensary porter. From time to time, he called his own writings “nonsense.”
Gottlieb is unfazed by the contradictions. He starts by laying out the contours of Viennese high society, with their salons and musical passions and intellectual feuds, before turning to the particulars of the Wittgenstein family. Ludwig’s domineering father was a sort of Austrian Andrew Carnegie, his semi-verbal mother was at least musical, as were his suicidal brothers and his repressed sisters. Apparently, the family members conversed in metaphors and analogies and musical phrases — anything but conventional conversation. Once his father died, Ludwig could shift from mechanical engineering to philosophy. Now he could ask big questions about the meaning of propositions and how people know anything and even whether those very questions made any sense.
Wittgenstein’s students complained about his similes and unclear ways of explaining. Gottleib writes, “Ludwig even came to regard the vivid comparisons of his family’s conversations as an invaluable boon to philosophizing: ‘Usually we think of similes as second-best things, but in philosophy they are the best thing of all,’ he told a student.”
Nevertheless, these questions were very important to Wittgenstein as well as Bertrand Russell, John Maynard Keynes, and other Cambridge luminaries, who debated and admired and disparaged each other for several decades. While his oblique approach to philosophical discourse may have been shaped by his family’s odd verbal tics, his manual labor and war work doesn’t seem to have shaped his philosophical work in significant ways.
Gottlieb reports that just before he died, Wittgenstein declared that he’d had a “wonderful life.” Since dying people are not known for ironic statements, we’re just left with another puzzle; the life we’ve read about seems anything but wonderful. In the end, Wittgenstein remains an enigma, but that’s almost to be expected.
Bettina Berch, author of the recent biography, From Hester Street to Hollywood: The Life and Work of Anzia Yezierska, teaches part-time at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
