Customer Reviews

Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I must have misunderstood the title -- I thought it meant that you could read the book in 90 minutes, not that it had been written in 90 minutes. The biographical sketch is fine, and a bit entertaining, though Strathern too often goes in for easy sarcasm and makes too many jokes at the expense of his subject. But his pretension to have dealt in any way whatsoever with Wittgenstein's thought is simply outrageous. There are in total about 7 pages devoted to Wittgenstein's work, which do not even provide the barest bones of the beginnings of the glimmerings of an understanding of this profound and difficult thinker. In this age, of course, the idea that one can attain a deep comprehension of a difficult topic with almost no effort is almost irresistible; but I fear greatly that this glib and shallow work will make people who might well have enjoyed reading Wittgenstein feel that they no longer need to. Of course, if all you are interested in is being able to drop the name of a famous philosopher at cocktail parties, this may be the book for you.

Strathern is a master at this kind of work, which mixes biography, critical analysis, historical context and humor all in a concise, informative & entertaining package. He lists a time line for the philosopher, his place in world/philosophic history & a selection of works for furthur reading. This series of books by Strathern is a wonderful course in Philosophy 101 without ever having to go to college, all presented in plain, easy to understand English without being bogged down with philosophy's often confusing vernacular. If you are expecting an in-depth review or complete analysis of the philosopher's life & work, read another book. This is meant to be a quick, concise overview & that's just what it provides.

Glib and condescending. The writer seems unwilling or perhaps just unable to come to terms with Wittgenstein's thought, so the whole book is nothing more than a series of snipes and jabs at Wittgenstein and his philosophy. When the author cannot come to terms with Wittgenstein's post-Tractatus thought, he simply dismisses it as bad philosophy. This is second-rate journalism, and gives innocent readers nothing intellectual to feed upon. I am disgusted that someone with such an obvious axe to grind regarding this particular philosopher, should be given the job of providing an overview of Wittgenstein's thought and genius. Well, I guess it takes one to know one. As Albert Einstein once said: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
Get Monk's bio for a real depiction of the philosopher, one that actually comes to grip with his thought.
Don't waste your time on this book. Unless you need something to line the bottom of your birdcage.

By now I have read several of Paul Strathern's "90-minute" introductions to individual philosophers, each no longer than the average magazine article. Strathern always sketches the philosopher's life and personality vividly, but there is so little detail or substance you wind up with only the vaguest idea of the man's philosophy. Such was the case here with Wittgenstein, whose work is skated over with laughable superficiality. Avoid this silly series.

A good, solid introduction to Wittgenstein and who he was; what he said (or as the man himself would perhaps want us to focus on, what he did *not* say).
Strathern mentions, it seems, in every section that Wittgenstein wanted to kill himself not only frequently but with a deep, burning desire. We get it. The man was tortured; such is the nature of philosophers. I think of Wittgenstein on the fence between philosophers and linguists, as for me he has come into play most often in the importance of speaking apophatically. I'm a great admirer, and have been humbled a great many times not only of how little I understand not only of who or what Wittgenstein was, but who or what God is: I am shown this when I approach the brilliant, too few works of the man himself.

Strathern did a good job of an approachable, get-your-feet-wet summary of him, managing to show both some problems in his work but not downplaying his importance.

This narrative of Wittgenstein's life brilliantly illuminates his character and his philosophy. Wittgenstein as a character fascinates. His principled approach to reality, his mad determination to fight to the end to know the ' truth'are at the heart of the story. The son of one of the wealthiest families in Austria of the thirties his overpowering and dominant father apparently paralyzed Wittgenstein's three brothers and did a good job of helping make him one of the strangest great philosophers of all. Wittgenstein is according to Strathern the only one of the great philosophers aside from Leibniz who had two different total answers to the questions of philosophy. One of the faults of the book is that Strathern does not do justice to the second philosophy that of ' The Philosophical Investigations' which he understands to be a nitpicking kind of wordplaying. And this when he does an excellent job of explaining Wittgenstein's first work ' The Tractatus'.
I found one of the most interesting parts of the work to be the story of Wittgenstein's relationship with Russell. How Russell who had attempted to in the ' Principia ' with Whitehead found all Mathematics on the basis of Logic was first corresponded with, then visited, then somehow forced into endless philosophical dialogue with Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein would not leave Russell or the truth alone, and as far as Strathern could discern succeeded eventually in finishing off Russell as a philosopher as he went beyond him.
Wittgenstein was a soldier in the first world war and a heroic one. The 'Tractatus' in which he thought he had answered all the problems of philosophy was completed when he was in a prisoner- of -war camp. 'The world is everything that is the case' he begins. And in a series of aphoristic staccato declarations he believes himself to polish off the whole of the Western philosophical tradition. He then retires from philosophy and goes off to be a village schoolteacher where his highly principled approach turns out to be absolutely inappropriate to the simple village children he teaches. He returns to philosophy when he understands that he has not really solved it all. He even reluctantly goes back to Cambridge where he teaches for fifteen years in the style which so entranced many of his devotees. The little room , the long silences, the pained expression, the waiting, and then the eruption of the ' thought'. Strathern says that the only who ever dared to contradict him in these sessions was another brilliant suicidal mind , Turing. In any case out of these probings came the 'Philosophical Investigations ' with its obsession with ordinary language. By the way a bit ironically one of the concepts Wittgenstein developed in that work is that of - family resemblance- which has to do with defining the essence of a concept and understanding that it does not have a simple single essence ordinarily but ' overlapping characteristics ' with a ' family of other concepts' as if were a series of 'Venn diagrams'.That is to say it is doubtful that Strathern or anyone else has defined the ' essence' of Wittgenstein in his particular effort.
Another side of Wittgenstein illuminated in the work is his turn to religion, and his mystical connection with the work of Tolstoy and the idea of a kind of holy simplicity. Saint Wittgenstein canonized by his university acolytes aimed perhaps more to be something like Saint Tolstoy who too had a predilection for divesting himself of the family fortune.
Wittgenstein, Strathern makes clear was arrogant to the point of insensitivity to the feelings of others. And yet there was something touching childlike in his arrogance, and certainly something great in his determination to think out the problem to the end.
He is one of the remarkable originals of philosophy and I think Strathern is correcting in discerning that his work verges on a kind of poetry.
It is ironic that so many have tried to follow the example of one who was truly a 'singularity' and a great one at that.
One negative moral note. Wittgenstein unfortunately had the habit of interfering in other peoples lives, and ruining them. His arrogance was that he knew for everyone what was best for themselves, understood music better than Mahler and literary criticism better than F.R. Leavis.
How strange and paradoxical that God often gives the greatest gifts of genius to those who are not particularly wonderful in their relations with their fellow human beings.
Among the Wittgensteinian gems which have become part of common philosophical parlance are :
" A philosophical problem has the form. I don't know my way about"
" What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
" Philosophy is letting the fly out of the fly bottle"