Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparrow
I read an interesting anecdote about Wittgenstein the other day. After publishing the Tractatus (supposedly solving philosophy for good), he took a job as a schoolteacher in an Austrian village. He was a brutal teacher and often beat the children - eventually he was forced to resign when word of his cruelty got out.
Years later he returned to the village and visited his ex-pupils who were now adults. He went from house to house begging them, sometimes on his knees, to forgive his treatment of them when they were children - none of them forgave him.
|
Wow, what a story! I've always heard that he wasn't always the most sociable of characters, but this story does show he had a very human side. He did, after all, try to make amends.
At one point, Wittgenstein was a student of Bertrand Russel, but I always felt Russell was the better, or at least the more accessible, writer. I find in myself a tendency to blame Wittgenstein for making philosophy to be more about the proper and exact use of language than it is about the "big questions."