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But his own nature, too, has long challenged prehensn.</div><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl SplScreenContentHearByle-kvEhqE ejWxsm"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH ivtvgj byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span><a class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM ByleLk-gEnFiw iUEiRd ggMZaT cXqSTL eErqIx byle__name-lk button" href="/ntributors/nikhil-krishnan">Nikhil Krishnan</a></span></span></p></div><time data-ttid="ContentHearPublishDate" dateTime="2022-05-09T06:00:00-04:00" class="SplScreenContentHearPublishDate-bMGEVk gvRvVr">May 9, 2022</time><div class="SocialInsWrapper-hKMEXV ffgPVr social-ins social-ins--standard SplScreenContentHearSocialShare-gSVclr kUKgnn"><ul 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240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Portra of Ludwig Wtgenste broken up by shap" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></picture></span></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 SplScreenContentHearGrid-kFpOdh fLkIyA"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn SplScreenContentHearCaptn-iOfEOv ckLUKG"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptn__text">Philosophy appeared on the right-hand pag of the wartime journals; more timate nfsns, d, were on the left.</span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptn__cred">Illtratn by Alexis Beclair</span></div></div></div></hear></div><div data-attribute-verso-pattern="article-body" class="ArticlePageContentBackGround-cNiFNN kbAoLA article-body__ntent"><div class="ActnBarWrapperContent-lasBkU 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class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><figure data-ttid="IameEmbed" class="IameEmbedWrapper-sc-dRedg cjyRVU iame-embed"><div data-ttid="IameEmbedContaer" class="IameEmbedContaer-hptgUZ fXVBaX"><div class="IameEmbedAspectRatWrapper-hFVJps BKpgQ"><iame class="IameEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IameEmbedContent lazyload" height="90" width="100%" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-orig allow-popups" tle="Embedd Frame" data-src=" allowfullscreen="" allow="toplay *; encrypted-media *; clipboard-wre; toplay; fullscreen; picture--picture"></iame></div></div></figure><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">No one expects ntemporary philosophers to be more than dly eccentric. Creatur of the morn amy, they have reers, not votns. Some mixture of centive and profsnal obligatn keeps them productive. They n cultivate the odd quirk—elbow patch or, nghtily, a cigar hab—but more outlandish idsyncrasi are led out by the stutns that disciple them to tamens.</p><p class="paywall">Of urse, the archetypal Wtern philosopher, Socrat, lived before there was an amy to tame him. And he was seen, even his time, to be—g the word advisedly—queer. Undoubtedly, that was the se the morn, pejorative-not-pejorative sense: he was attracted to men. But he was also queer ways that are harr to fe.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">The Greek word often applied to him was <em>atopos</em>, lerally, “out of place.” His out-of-placens nsisted what the scholar Martha Nsbm has lled a “eper imperabily of spir.” Socrat simply uld not be unted on to say what one expected him to say.</p><p class="paywall">He was also queer how he managed to be ratnaly wh the most abject unreasonablens. No one n really sire what’s bad, he said. It is worse to do wrong than to be wronged. The jt man is happier than the unjt man, even when he is beg tortured on the rack. What was like to be the prence of someone who believed such thgs?</p><p class="paywall">There is only one nonil philosopher of the twentieth century wh anythg remblg the tras: Ludwig Wtgenste. He was one of the founrs of a tradn—the “analytic”—that has e to domate amic philosophy much of the world. But he has not been afford the cloak of impersonaly that shrouds most analytic philosophers.</p><p class="paywall">Wtgenste belongs, rather, wh figur like Socrat, J, and Gandhi, that seemgly everybody who met him felt moved to rerd the enunter. How many people the history of philosophy are the subject of a two-volume tome of anecdot? What explas the fascatn wh the ephemera of one man’s life, cludg among people who claim that the work was the thg?</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Even for those who know the facts of that life well, “the difficulty has been to discern them an telligible human beg,” as a reviewer of Ray Monk’s five bgraphy, “<a data-offer-url=" class="external-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Ludwig Wtgenste: The Duty of Geni</a>,” om 1990, wrote. A young man om a fabuloly wealthy and cultivated Vienne fay arriv Cambridge, 1911, to study wh Bertrand Rsell, the preëment logician of his age. He is evintly a tormented soul, and he mak ltle effort to be liked. He is and a b arrogant but another way whout vany. He hat the social world of Cambridge, wh s gossipy gays and sardonic dons. He quickly shows talent enough to nvce Rsell that he is no charlatan, and charisma enough to nvce Rsell that, even if he were, acquatance might be worth the bother.</p><p class="paywall">On the verge of a radil breakthrough, he cis to live alone ral Norway, to thk about logic absolute solu. But that plan is terpted by the First World War. He enlists the Army of the Atro-Hungarian Empire spe beg eligible for a medil exemptn, and serv as an ordary soldier even though someone of his class uld have joed as an officer. The war and soldierg evintly mean <em>somethg</em> to him, but nothg about his cisn is obv. Neher before nor after the war do he show much tert workaday polics.</p><p class="paywall">In his ee moments as a soldier, he scribbl notebooks that are divid between remarks sted for an amb philosophil mancript and personal remarks on relign, masturbatn, and the quotidian bs of beg at war. He repeatedly volunteers for the most dangero postg available to him. Along the way, his mancript on logic is transformed almost beyond regnn.</p><p class="paywall">The origal project seems to have been one that Rsell iated—to show that behd the msy outward “clothg” of language li a lean body of thought, stere and simple. That aim, to reveal the orr behd the disorr, surviv the war. But there is now somethg new. The meangful e of language, Wtgenste says, giv a picture of the world: <em>there’s a tree by your hoe; there’s an apple on that tree</em>. The are ways that the world is or uld be. But he adms that his acunt of language and thought, by sign, leav out the athetic and the ethil: <em>the tree is betiful; stealg that apple would be wrong</em>. Such proposns do not state facts; they are, his view, nonsensil, even mystil. He is equally forthright about admtg that his strictur apply to his own words: proposns about the nature of proposns don’t specify stat of the world, eher; they, too, lack sense.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">After the war, the mancript is published on Rsell’s remendatn, although Rsell is dub about s ntents. Meanwhile, Wtgenste surpris everyone by forswearg philosophy (whose central problems he thks he has now solved) and gog off to ral Atria to teach schoolchildren; he clouts one stunt on the head so hard that the boy llaps to the ground. Unr scty for his disciplary methods, and lately nvced that he hasn’t, fact, solved all the problems of philosophy, he returns to Cambridge, slowly makg his way to a new, and equally radil, philosophil outlook.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><asi class="PersistentAsiWrapper-VGrR daRVRt persistent-asi" style="posn:absolute;top:to;height:to" data-ttid="PersistentAsiWrapper"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="lz664w"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></asi></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="grfqkr"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Once, he had hoped to X-ray language and expose the ncealed solidi of meang and logic; now he’s after the signifince of surfac—he wants to explore how ordary language is ed ordary settgs. The rults of his quiri don’t lend themselv to a slim volume, and he do not manage to fish another book his lifetime. He di 1951, at the age of sixty-two, of prostate ncer, leavg behd dozens of reverent stunts and many thoands of pag of unpublished mancripts.</p><p class="paywall">Those, at any rate, are the basic facts of Wtgenste’s life. For a sense of what he was like, one mt turn to the anecdot. The provi a sense of the man’s prence, wh his flannel shirts, leather jackets, and tweed ps, his rgg tenor voice. They also provi a sense of the surrounds—the spartan rooms wh their nvas chairs and iron stove—where he put on his terrifyg performanc of thought.</p><p class="paywall">The Amerin philosopher Norman Mallm, who was a stunt of Wtgenste’s, wr of the “equent and prolonged perds of silence” his class, of how sometim, “when he was tryg to draw a thought out of himself, he would prohib, wh a peremptory motn of the hand, any qutns or remarks.” Mallm go on, “His gaze was ncentrated; his face was alive; his hands ma arrtg movements; his exprsn was stern. One knew that one was the prence of extreme serns, absorptn, and force of tellect. . . . Wtgenste was a ighteng person at the class. He was very impatient and easily angered.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Many thgs angered him: someone failg to tend to one of his hoeplants, a stunt unable to formulate a thought. (“I might as well talk to this stove!”) But he uld sta the tensy for only so long. A uple of hours of that, and he would be ready for an excursn to the “flicks.”</p><p class="paywall">He loathed Brish films and generally sisted on Amerin on, beg a particular fan of Carmen Miranda. (He was also a votee of the pulpy murr mysteri served up the magaze <em>Detective Story</em>.) He would s the ont row so that he uld see nothg but the screen—perhaps fearg memori of the drag lecture. Woe beti any pann who tried to talk to him. There was only the movie on the screen, and Wtgenste, rapt his seat, munchg on a ld pork pie.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Of the stunts who still turn up every year for troductory urs on Wtgenste, some of them are there for the geni logician, the spiratn behd both somethg lled “logil posivism” and somethg opposed to , lled “ordary-language philosophy.” But other stunts are there for Wtgenste the sage, the mag, the riddler—the man who left Rsell bewilred by a turn to mysticism at the end of a book that was supposed to be about logic.</p><p class="paywall">The book qutn, the “<a data-offer-url=" class="external-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Tractat Logi-Philosophic</a>,” rri the imprs of both Wtgenstes. The work was posed durg a perd of ary leave the summer of 1918, out of those notebooks. It was published 1921 German, and English the followg year. Whether anyone at the time or sce has unrstood fully remas an open qutn.</p><p class="paywall">One of the few thgs ’s safe to say about the “Tractat” is that is ncerned wh the le between the effable and the effable. What, if anythg, li beyond language? Some of Wtgenste’s early rears—the so-lled logil posivists of terwar Vienna—saw him a kdred spir, someone drawg the “lims of sense,” as they did, around the proposns of natural science. Almost everybody rejects that terpretatn of the “Tractat” now, but whout agreeg on another.</p><p class="paywall">It’s hard to know what to make of a book that begs wh “The world is everythg that is the se” and ends wh “Whereof one nnot speak, thereof one mt be silent.” The numberg of proposns (om 1 to 7, wh numerable nted proposns—5.251 and so forth), the e of symbols and of a special idlect, all suggt the kd of work one mt be a mathematician to unrstand. But then we e up agast l—allive, enigmatic—that would not be out of place a piece of mornist poetry. A queer book, then, by a queer man.</p><p class="paywall">The queert thg of all about the “Tractat” is s notor proposn 6.54, near the end of the text, which stat, of his proposns, “he who unrstands me fally regniz them as sensels.” The rear mt “surmount the proposns; then he se the world rightly.” The l have spired a lively bate on how Wtgenste wanted his book to be read, and on how serly this remark self is to be taken. But has been regnized as signifint that Wtgenste referred to “unrstandg me,” rather than to “unrstandg my proposns.”</p><p class="paywall">Clever stunts n eventually make sense of the logic and turn out elegant ltle says about the “picture theory of meang,” “logil atomism,” and “the sayg/showg distctn.” But cleverns seems the wrong virtue to employ for unrstandg a man who tells , mysterly, that the “world of the happy man is que another than that of the unhappy man” (6.43). Or that “he liv eternally who liv the prent” (6.4311). Taken out of ntext, the seemg mysticism periloly close to ksch. Some clever people (startg wh Rsell) have nclud that we’d do well not to bother wh .</p><p class="paywall">But others see those remarks a ll to a virtue rarer than cleverns. A virtue that uld be scribed as pth. Wtgenste, Mallm relled, likened philosophil thkg to swimmg: “Jt as one’s body has a natural tenncy towards the surface and one has to make an <em>exertn</em> to get to the <em>bottom</em>—so is wh thkg.” Whatever pth is, Wtgenste is one of a small number of philosophers of the twentieth-century non to have some claim to . That is the real basis for his place the non, and manifts self the <em>voice</em> of the “Tractat,” which n lurch whout warng om the technil to the nfsnal. That unprecented mixg of registers is another aspect of the text’s queerns. The challenge of unrstandg the “Tractat” is not, then, easily severable om the challenge of unrstandg the man who wrote .</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The terpretative dtry around Wtgenste has not been short of material. The bootlegs (samizdat pi of lecture not, d notebooks, rrponnce) would fill the shelv of a small library. Even now, after his hold over his disciple has loosened—few people walk around llg themselv Wtgensteians—his life and personaly ntue to provi fertile ground for speculatn.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Man trench at stg between two basketball players" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“I thk I’m at the wrong bench.”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtoon__cred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptn__cred">Cartoon by Jerald Lewis</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon

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