Many people believe that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was the 20th century’s most important philosopher. It is somewhat ironic, then, that he is probably best known for waving a poker at fellow ...

Rankings of the greatest this or the most important that almost always generate dozens of column inches. We shouldn’t be surprised that one exception to this rule is a recently rediscovered list of ...

The best class I took in college was on the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Until that point, I had avoided philosophy of language as simply being too esoteric and hermetic to be of use. David Pears, ...

No person could reasonably claim to have the answer to the meaning of life. An even more daring claim is to know what meaning is at all. What is the meaning of these very words? Of language as a whole ...

OF ALL THE innovations that sprang from the trenches of the first world war—the zip, the tea bag, the tank—the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” must be among the most elegant and humane. When the ...

Recently Slate tech writer David Aurbach wrote a fascinating column about how Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language can account for much of the confusion that arises when we debate issues ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great Anglo-Austrian philosopher, who died fifty years ago this year, often looked puzzled. In fact, puzzlement, about the world and about the concepts with which we try to ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) sought to lead us beyond the long fantasy — so dominant in philosophy — that a single mind can figure everything out. Rather, we need the greater unity of genuine ...