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 ...

Is Wittgenstein’s later philosophy – as epitomized in the Philosophical Investigations (referred to as “PI”) – a philosophy of conservatism? Or, stated less academically and more usefully: Does ...

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 ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein is a notoriously difficult philosopher to read, let alone understand. Help is here in the form of one of the volumes in W.W. Norton’s new “How to Read” series. They are short books ...

While pondering the ongoing debate about whether the human mind is capable of truly understanding the Higgs boson, I was reminded of section 114 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Just ...

A brisk new portrait by Anthony Gottlieb emphasizes the philosopher’s restless, ambivalent mind and Viennese family background. By Nikhil Krishnan Nikhil Krishnan is the author of “A Terribly Serious ...

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 ...