
Friedrich Hayek’s recollection of his cousin Ludwig Wittgenstein (2016) - brandonlc
https://notesonliberty.com/2016/05/08/friedrich-hayeks-recollection-of-ludwig-wittgenstein/
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nickik
This time in Vienna was really rather interesting. So many intellectual
projects and groups going on in Vienna. Economists, philosophy and of course
Freud and so on. Hayek came in contact with quite a few interesting
characters, including Bukharin who would be the leading economist among the
Bolsheviks. They didn't agree on much unfortunately.

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a_bonobo
If you can, read Zweig's The World Of Yesterday, a memoir on life in Vienna
before WW1. It's surely rose-tinted, but the amount of culture and
intellectual life was outstanding, what an enormous loss.

(Hitler also lived there at the time, going to the same class as Wittgenstein
for a year or two, neither remembering each other later)

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jhbadger
There's also a good recent book by Karl Sigmund called "Exact Thinking in
Demented Times" which is about the Logical Positivists in Vienna during this
period (and the later interwar period) which included Wittgenstein.

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a_bonobo
With a preface by Douglas R Hofstadter, nice! I'll get it, thank you :)

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sswaner
I love the last line of this recollection: "But I simply could not find him.
Whether he regretted having become so deeply engaged, or had discovered that,
after all, I was just another Philistine, I do not know. At any rate, I never
saw him again."

That seems to reinforce the philosopher as enigma, perhaps fitting for the
philosopher who thought all philosophical problems had been solved with the
publication of Tractatus.

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throwlaplace
>philosopher who thought all philosophical problems had been solved with the
publication of Tractatus.

people repeat this all of the time but it's not true. he wrote Philosophical
Investigations in 53 approximately 32 years after tractatus.

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simonh
Maybe he changed his mind.

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codeulike
Yes he eventually decided the tractatus had some oroblems

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intuitionist
The anecdote of Wittgenstein brandishing a fireplace poker at Karl Popper at a
meeting of the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club is quite well known—but that
incident happened after World War II was over. So if Hayek’s recollection here
is accurate, he apparently made something of a habit of it.

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voldacar
Thanks for posting, I know both of these fellows have significant followings
on this site.

It's a shame they never talked politics, that probably would have made for
some very intriguing material

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llcoolv
And also very difficult to comprehend. Concretics of politics had been much
different back then.

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codeulike
problems

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grabbalacious
_> Every convention was dissected and every conventional form exposed as
fraud._

This kind of blanket criticism is counterproductive and harmful. Our
conventions 'know' more than we do and should be criticised only where they
themselves seem to be causing harm.

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ncmncm
That's just, like, your opinion, man.

But it is a deeply distracting activity. Not finding something worthy of
concentrated attention might be a character flaw.

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grabbalacious
No, I explained it, Lebowski! I myself have been involved in circles where
this strange form of philosophical posturing or virtue-signalling has reigned.
They are short-lived circles. It may or may not have something to do with the
total and rapid collapse of intellectual life in Vienna or the suicides
mentioned in the article. I don't know. But it is a sign of decay. (OK, that
last bit _was_ opinion.)

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ncmncm
The real problem is that the activity hinges on objectivity, but it is at all
points apparent to an observer from any distance that objectivity is
overwhelmingly harder to attain than any of the goals of the activity. The
goals themselves are tainted.

