Wittgenstein’s friends were few, but those he had, he clung to feverishly (see World of Books, this page). Monk displays a variety of correspondence from students and faculty during the philosopher’s first days in Cambridge under Bertrand Russell’s tutelage, each elucidating a character who paced floors in silence, pursued professors after lectures to defend theories and argued with anyone at hand over just about anything.įew could put up with him, although his flowering brilliance did attract the attention of the Cambridge elites, among them economist John Maynard Keynes.
The young Wittgenstein seemed to possess a mind trapped in a pressure cooker. That his passion prevailed is remarkable in itself three of Wittgenstein’s four brothers committed suicide under the weight of their father’s expectations. Wittgenstein was an inconspicuous intellectual in a house of musical and technical genius, and struggled to reconcile his passion for philosophy with demands that he become an engineer and businessman. His personal struggles may have found roots in a family who buried its own identity, trading Jewish heritage for membership in the Viennese bourgeoisie. Not that Monk shies from confronting the imponderables in Wittgenstein’s theories he describes just enough of the philosopher’s ideas on atomic propositions and tautology to trouble any layman.īut to discover the fertile grounds that gave birth to Wittgenstein’s ruthless search for truth, one has to dig deeper. With only one book, one article and one book review published during his lifetime, it’s safe to say there’s much more to the man than what he put on paper.
In a sense, the peculiar life of Ludwig Wittgenstein invites exactly this kind of work. With that in mind, author Ray Monk sets off on a very specific quest in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Duty of Genius – to draw, where countless others have failed, an unbroken line between the work of the philosopher and the man himself. Assessing the life of a philosopher may be a writer’s greatest challenge – with few individuals do the spiritual and emotional realms play such a prominent role in moulding professional consequences.
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