Philosophischen Untersuchungen

[jolly]

Quote: " The Investigations, the far superior work, announce the failure of the Tractatus.  
Whereas the Tractatus was the culmination of logical positivism, the 
Investigations were the obituary. "
 
Popper, Russell, Toulmin and numerous other major analytical types dismissed the PI; numerous students and associates of Wittgenstein asserted that Professor Ludwig of the 30s and 40s was mostly a charlatan, if not an outright mental case.   He certainly had some problems.  The Tractatus is considered profound and important, at least in philosophy departments. The poker incident at Cambridge--in which LW may or may not have threatened Sir Karl Popper with a fire poker  after Popper made a disparaging  comment about LW, shows him to be if not a nutjob, at least unstable.   There are some reports that Uncle Bertie denounced his former prodigy at the poker incident  and took sides with Popper and Toulmin and the anti-LW faction.   V and Pynchon have Wittgensteinian elements ( of course the great continentalists here may correct me) but there is also some satire of LW and positivism as well (-as in Mondaugen's dicovery of DIEWELTISTALLEWASDERFALLIST).    Read McGee's Confessions of a
 Philosopher,  or Wittgenstein's Poker  for criticism of the PI. 


		
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