Total Eclipse

7 Comments

1. 

   rax says:

   June 9th, 2006 at 6:54

   shake ‘n bake… and ‘ah hepped.

2. 

   Shay says:

   June 10th, 2006 at 3:00

   What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence…

3. 

   Michael says:

   July 10th, 2006 at 8:46

   But LW was miserable, lonely, and alienated virtually everyone around him. How is that hero material?

4. 

   Shay says:

   July 10th, 2006 at 9:26

   Yes, it’s true. He often complained that no one understands him, that Frege understood nothing, and that Russell misunderstood him. Not to mention his utter discontent with the Vienna Circle, and his little poker fiasco with Sir Karl Popper.

   Having said that, upon reading his masterful Lecture on Ethics, I’m sure you’ll come to see him as not only a genius logician and one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, but as a great man too.

5. 

   Shay says:

   July 10th, 2006 at 9:33

   ADDENDUM: a better link, the previous one does not include the introduction.

6. 

   Michael says:

   July 26th, 2006 at 12:07

   I have (of course) read that lecture many times before.

   Even his relentless honesty was destructive to everyone around him. A great man–certainly!–but if we emulate LW (and I assume heroes are to be emulated?) we lead ourselves into the worst states of repression, vanity, misery, and alienation. His regrettable personality was tolerated, I suspect, because it was obvious that he was a genius of the highest order. And even then he frequently failed (think of Malcolm!) This is, I suppose, a matter of a taste at the end of the day, but: Ick.

7. 

   Shay says:

   July 26th, 2006 at 2:06

   Hmm. Well, my take is not that heroes are necessarily to be emulated, neither in full nor in part, but rather admired for their virtues. These virtues themselves are what should be emulated, the heroes merely exemplify things I strive for in myself.

   Interestingly, I recently heard Freeman Dyson speak of his encounter with Wittgenstein:

   “Of course, Wittgenstein was a man who loved to torture people and so he invited me into his rooms one day – this was the closest contact I ever had with him, in fact. I mean, we passed each other very often on the stairs without speaking, but once he suddenly invited me into his rooms and said, “Would you like to come and have a cup of coffee?” So I was thrilled, I said, “Yes, I’ll certainly come.” So I came in there and there was one chair, and he invited me to sit down in it, and it was a canvas deck chair which meant I was practically lying horizontally on this canvas chair, and he was standing uncomfortably waiting for me to say something, and so I found it acutely embarrassing, but in any case, I’d come in and so I thought I might as well try, and so eventually I decided I would start a conversation. So I said to him, “Well, you know, I read the TRACTATUS and I’d be interested to know whether you still believe the things you said in the TRACTATUS or have you changed you mind? And so Wittgenstein looked at me in a very, very hostile fashion and he said, “Tell me please, which newspaper do you represent?” That was the end of the conversation. So there was another long silence, and then I drank the coffee and left. So I didn’t get much out of Wittgenstein. I had the impression he was simply a charlatan. He loved to torture people and he was of course always extremely insulting to women. He couldn’t tolerate women coming to his lectures, and he would just simply be so rude that they had to leave. So a thoroughly disagreeable character, and apart from the TRACTATUS I never read any of his stuff, so I shouldn’t judge him but – I think I consider him anyway overrated as a philosopher.”

Leave a Reply

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail