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Clive James led off an essay by suggesting that there was a buddy movie to be made around Wittgenstein and Russell. He was joking, but part of the joke is that their fame much outran any engagement with or even interest in their philosophical work. I don't think that leaving little memory beyond the work is a bad thing. What does it add to one's understanding of Kant to know a few anecdotes about the regularity of his life.

One can regret the opinions in Frege's diaries without it affecting what one thinks about the work.




> What does it add to one's understanding of Kant to know a few anecdotes about the regularity of his life.

If we can build up a picture of someone from anecdotes about their life we can use this information to inform our understanding of why their work might have taken one form rather than another.

For example, Schopenhauer criticised the notoriously obscure schemata of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by saying that it was a result of Kant's psychological need for architectonic symmetry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(Kant)#cite_ref-93


That he took a walk everyday is somewhat informative, given how much of his philosophy is centered on normativity, but I prefer the anecdote about how he was a billiards hustler as a student, because even more pointedly, Kant's philosophy is about making space for human freedom in a world of Newtonian mechanical determination.

Great love for Wittgenstein, Russell, Frege, the Vienna Circle—their philosophical and logical writings—and I do feel alienated when I encounter their popular treatments, because it makes my ego feel special having read their most important works, but I bet the Wittgenstein-Russell fame was good for lots of people getting exposed to the path: I heard about them in a Time Magazine special edition retrospective on artists and thinkers of the 20th Century 22 years ago.




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