Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius

I bought Ray Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein because I wanted to know why he was considered one of the 20th Century’s major philosophers. First, a word about the structure of the book. It is a detailed serial narrative – he did this and then he did that, right to the end, where he dies. Period. No concluding summary of his importance of his philosophy or other similar wrap-ups. When W publishes something or lectures seriously about something, Monk spends some brief time giving his opinion about its content, but he never dives so deep into the subject that you give up trying to follow. So this book never flagged, and I read it easily through its 600 pages.What did I conclude? One, that a lot of his reputation is based on a cult of personality, based on some of these factors: as a rising philosopher, he was young, attractive, informally dressed; in lecture he was demanding, with the speed of flow of his ideas making him hard to follow, making him mysterious. His personal eccentricities added to interest in him. Some quotes:. . . the fervent allegiance to W that was given by most of the young Cambridge philosophers as this time. Ryle was disturbed to find that veneration for W was so incontinent that mentions of any other philosophers were greeted with jeers.. . . W himself often felt that he had a bad influence on his students, People imitated his gestures, adopted his expressions, even wrote philosophy in a way that made use of his techniques – all, it seems, without understanding the point of his work.The second thing that I concluded was that his concepts were so difficult to understand that it’s questionable that there will be a continuing interest in his published works. He wrote two major books. The first, the Tractatus, he later decided that it was full of faults, and his philosophy went off in another direction, finally ending up as what was published in Philosophical Investigations. of which Monk writes:. . .Other great philosophical works can be read with interest and entertainment by someone who wants to know “what the philosopher said”. But if Philosophical Investigations is read in this spirit it will quickly become boring and a chore to read, not because it is intellectually difficult, but because it will be practically impossible to gather what W is saying.Other quotes regarding difficulty:(Regarding a series of debates with Alan Turing) , . . many of those who attended did not grasp what was at stake between the two. They were on the whole more interested in W than in mathematics. Malcolm, although he was aware that W was doing something important, understood almost nothing of the lectures until ten years later.. . . she asked him how many people he thought understood his philosophy. He pondered the question for a long time before he replied, Two”.All the above comments may be criticized by professional philosophers who will say that I can’t even follow the basic arguments that are currently interesting in philosophy. That’s probably true, but that’s largely because those arguments have little value for me.I want to add, as sort of an analogy, my reaction to a biography of Willem de Kooning, read for the same reason: why is he important? I found the same cult of personality and, on my part, the same lack of understanding of his works. People who will pay millions for one of his paintings will claim that they understand what he is saying. It’s always cool to say you understand something that you can’t have the slightest knowledge about. For me it’s true of de Kooning, and I end up wondering how true it may be of Wittgenstein.The book is highly recommended. Whether you agree with my ideas of W’s importance or not, this is a superb biography, clearly written and always interesting.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990), by Ray Monk, is a superb biography that illuminates both the life and the work of a modern genius. A critic writing for The Christian Science Monitor states: "Great philosophical biographies can be counted on one hand. Monk's life of Wittgenstein is such a one. It's a probing, moving experience."Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was born on April 27, 1889, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He died at the age of 62 on April 29, 1951, in Cambridge, England. Many academic professionals rate him as the most important and most influential philosopher of the 20th century.Wittgenstein had two completely different careers: the “early" Wittgenstein, author of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), a work which many critics believed (incorrectly) that Wittgenstein was a logical positivist, and the “late” Wittgenstein, author of Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953) in which he argued that all philosophical "problems" are merely linguistic confusions--misunderstandings of the proper use of language.In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein wrote: "Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions,' but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy, thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries."A person who is only passingly familiar with Wittgenstein and his philosophy probably has heard at least of Wittgenstein's explication of "language games," a method which, he affirms shows that the words and concepts of our various "languages" are rooted in our idiosyncratic "life-stream" and are formed by the particular culture which we inherited and inhabit. Wittgenstein's explanation of how "language games" work (and often don't work) is one of the most fascinating and intriguing aspects of his philosophy, especially as found in his Philosophical Investigations.Wittgenstein also stated, "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." The aim in philosophy is to dispel the fog of confusion, or to use another metaphor, "to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle."At Trinity College, Cambridge, Wittgenstein was a protégé, and later the "master," of another world-famous philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who described Wittgenstein's philosophy as "a curious kind of logical mysticism." A troubled and tortured individual, Wittgenstein is portrayed by Ray Monk as a relentless truth-seeker who struggled to live with ethical seriousness, honesty, and integrity.Was Wittgenstein a genius? Dictionary.com provides this definition: "genius.--[a person] having an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work in science, art, music, etc.: the genius of Mozart." One's evaluation and assessment of Wittgenstein's ostensible genius depends not only upon one's level of intelligence and culture, but also upon one's own philosophical stance, including the ability, or inability, to "see" life and the world from a perspective akin to Wittgenstein's.Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius is a brilliant work that presents an embarrassment of riches defying the ability of reviewers to do it justice. If it is legitimate to make such a claim, Ray Monk shows in this volume that in the genre of writing biographies, he is himself a genius!ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ray Monk is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, England, where he has taught since 1992. His interests lie in the philosophy of mathematics, the history of analytic philosophy, and philosophical aspects of biographical writing. His works include Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921 (1996); Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 (2001); and Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center (2014).

Good read. Light conceptually and entertaining.Monk sheds light on Wittgenstein so we can relate to him and see his struggles behind his greatest published achievements.The life of Wittgenstein was certainly surprising and even more astounded he could get that much work done with everything going on in his life.This was recommended to me by a High School critical thinking professor - good choice of author (Monk).As far as the book itself - arrived quickly, no damage or wear to be seen.