In this thread I'll do my best to answer questions about Wittgenstein's philosophy and life. I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy and wrote my thesis on Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I developed an interest in Wittgenstein largely on my own, and have studied the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations in detail (the former with the direction of my thesis adviser), though I have some familiarity with other texts, such as the "Blue and Brown Books." I have read Ray Monk's biography, as well as substantial portions of the critical literature surrounding Wittgenstein, especially exegetical works by Saul Kripke and Stanley Cavell, as well as derivative works by John McDowell and others.

I consider myself a Wittgensteinian in that my general approach to philosophical problems is quietist, and of prevailing interpretations of Wittgenstein find myself most convinced by Kripke and Eli Friedlander. Please feel free to ask any questions about Wittgenstein, philosophical or biographical. If you have questions about specific passages in his works, please provide the relevant excerpt, as I will not necessarily have a copy readily available.

Hope this proves to be a fun thread.

How big an effect do you think the war and his service had on him and his later work?

That wiki is rather short, but I am fascinated by language. When you are contemplating language as expression, are you refering to it as an expression as self, community and it's collective intelligence, or the influence on people? (of course, i can be way wrong on all of these approaches)

With regard to the Tractatus, the impact was substantial. Significant portions of Wittgenstein's notebooks from the period of his service as a soldier appear either verbatim or slightly modified in the Tractatus. In particular, Remark 6 to Remark 7 all show a heavy influence from the war. While a soldier, Wittgenstein became increasingly religious, and religious sentiment surfaced periodically throughout his later life. Indeed, Wittgenstein at one point attempted to become a monk, but was rejected on the grounds that he was too psychologically troubled to join a monastery. This religiosity surfaces in the portions of the Tractatus that remark on "the mystical," which are regarded by many critics of the book as a strange, out-of-place turn for an otherwise aggressively rigorous logical work. I can only guess that the religiousness was Wittgenstein's response to the horrors of war - his psychological means of coping with the trauma he experienced daily in the trenches. During this period, Wittgenstein's journals show that each time his unit ended up avoiding combat, he felt disappointment. He seemed to believe that service to his country demanded that he see action on the front lines.

The war seems all but absent from Philosophical Investigations, however, in that there are almost no mentions of religious topics, and Wittgenstein's allegiance to any concept of "the mystical" seems to have vanished. Presumably, events as dramatic as war have a lasting impact on one's psyche, but it is difficult to predict what the Philosophical Investigations would have been without WWI - or whether a book recognizable as that work would have existed. Counterfactuals aside, in general there are no clear signs of the thematic concerns that are easiest to link biographically with wartime experience in the Investigations, though it is possible there are subtle connections I am failing to see.

Wow. Quietism is cool.

Have you read any of the source material from wiki (other than the ones you've already mentioned)?

And do you know of any other good internet resources?

Personally, I think you eventually realize that your own illogical beliefs have no reason to be shared with you to anyone. They are illogical and you shouldn't try to convince anyone of them.

In general, quietists evaluate language in social contexts. Linguistic acts are meaningful in virtue of their use for particular communicative purposes, and the rules constraining meaning are given by the particular social context in which a speaker participates. This is not, as John Haugeland points out, "definition by mob rule," though; words don't mean one thing rather than another simply because a large enough group of people use them so. (Why this is true gets deep into Kripke, an issue I'd rather omit for now.) Rather, the actual social context shows how particular signs are used, such that which signs a particular society uses shows which concepts it has uses for. To the quietist, it is thus a misunderstanding to ask philosophical questions like "What is truth?" because truth - in each instance - is defined by its use in a given social situation.

I've read Wittgenstein, McDowell, Davidson, Brandom, Noë, Haugeland, and a few others in that tradition, some ordinary-language philosophy (most notably Austin), and some related thoughts from American pragmatism.

If you're interested, I would recommend seeking out introductory material on Wittgenstein, such as The Cambridge Companion, though quietism in general may be difficult to understand without some prior training in philosophy.

I have almost no formal grounding in philosophy, and close to no knowledge of formal logic. Could I, in theory, just jump straight into Philosophical Investigations and get something useful out of it, or would I be missing too much context?

Maybe tough to answer, and not the kind of question you're looking for anyway, but whatever.

Some philosophers you can jump in to--Hume, Locke, Descartes, Russell come to mind. I don't think I'd put anything Wittgenstein into that camp.

Apparent Monk, who did biographies of Russell and Wittgenstein, is a big fan of the latter and not the former. However, I thought Russell came off as a prince and Wittgenstein as a first class jerk. So, was Wittgenstein basically a jerk? (Not that there is anything wrong with that philosophically.)

I've never heard the term "quietism" before, but it seems to fit me to some degree, as well. Thanks for sharing, DrM.

My thoughts on language, from my own attempt at multi-linguism and talking to multi-linguists shows me alot of peculiarities of one language to another and states something of the society. For example, Japan is very intrenched in codes of honor, so they have, I think, 32 ways to say "I," depending on man to woman, child to elder, etc. Most of the Russian-like languages (technically, Lithuanian is the base, for the nits) have a word to describe every single thing, but not as honorific as Japanese. The history of the Hebrew speakers has a long sad history and it is strongly reflected in the language. But you take English, and many linguists have a love/hate relationship with it because there is few words and that causes the language to not be as rich as others, but the simplicity is attractive. I wonder why English and German countries are high in the technological and economic heap. I have been told our language is an "engineering" or an "advertising" language. Then consider 3rd world languages and they are..

When he said the point of the Tractatus is ethical, what did he mean?

.. Very simplistic. For example, Cambodian doesn't describe the parts of the tree such as a branch or roots; it is simply a tree. Then I wonder why Spanish speaking countries are more 3rd world than the rest of the countries with a Romance language. And what of Arabic which I know voirtually nothing about... How would this thinking be done by a quitest? (sorry about the break. My phone)