With which Wittgenstein book should I begin?

[Anonymous No.13767931]

I want to understand the ideas of this man about language

[Anonymous No.13768074]

Start with the TLP, then move onto the Philosophical Investigations.
Wittgenstein didn't know about philosophy (except for whatever he'd read up on by Frege or Russell) back when he wrote the TLP, so it's not necessary to be acquainted with any part of the history of philosophy to understand his work. As a matter of fact, reading anyone else will probably just confuse you, like Russell was back when he wrote the introduction to the TLP, so trust Witty and read what he's got to say for himself.

[Anonymous No.13768099]

>>13768074
This is right and true.

However, do not expect to be able to understand all of what he has to say.

[Anonymous No.13768270]

>>13767931
Blue Book is interesting because it's a lot of stuff that was left out of other books.
Fun diagrams too. TLP too. It's available as a map too, which is fun to geek out on:

http://tractatus.lib.uiowa.edu/map/

[Anonymous No.13768295]

>>13768074
>Wittgenstein has not read any philosophy other than Frege and Russell (both of whom were not especially well-read either)
>You should still study Wittgenstein

Why would I bother to read a guy's work when he couldn't be bothered to read the luminaries who came before him?

That would be like a mathematician trying to build a new system without having learned calculus.

Peirce, Hocking, Jaspers, and Cassirer all seem like better, more historically-grounded points of entry into modern philosophy. Cassirer's philosophy of language is especially impressive.

[Anonymous No.13768328]

>>13768295
except OP's thread isn't about an entry into modern philosophy but entry into witty

>>13768074
>>13768270
I think these answers are great OP

Tractacus is difficult but is chronologically the beginning and the point from which he (arguably) advanced/negated his later views.

Blue Book (and Brown Book) are slightly more digestible--they're put together by his students from his lectures--which might be helpful if you're really hitting the wall.

[Anonymous No.13768336]

>>13768328
Huh?

[Anonymous No.13768374]

>>13768328
What inspires one to persevere in studying Wittgenstein's philosophy of language in spite of its serious deficiencies (he is not conversant with the greater world of ideas he engages with)?

[Anonymous No.13768408]

>>13768295
Huh?

[Anonymous No.13768425]

>>13768336
what're you missing here

>>13768374
because he's fucking brilliant. even the most intelligent philosophers who were in contact with his work could sense that even if they didn't understand it.

Look, if you're looking for someone with the thiccest nexus, try Grice or Frege, maybe Saussure if you really want to go down that rabbit hole or are studying the postmodernists in particular.

[Anonymous No.13768459]

>>13768425
>He's smart
>Smart guys say he's smart
>HIS NAME STARTS WITH "WIT"
>WIT-TY! WIT-TY! WIT-TY!

Oh brother. Why is this such a meme? Call me a simpleton, but I just want to know what meaningful, original insight I can gain from the guy, whatever his IQ happened to be.

[Anonymous No.13768460]

>>13768425
yikes

[Anonymous No.13768545]

Start with Philosophical Investigations unless you're an analytic philosophy student and you're reading the Tractatus specifically for a course. The Tractatus:
- is very contentious. There is no mainstream consensus on its interpretation.
- is much more specifically a philosophy of logic text than a general philosophy text. According to most of the major interpretations of the Tractatus, you will need to understand a lot about developments and debates in analytic philosophy ca. the turn of the 19th century to fully understand how Wittgenstein is reacting against them or carrying out an immanent critique of their ideas (or completing their ideas? again, no one agrees; even Russell, who wrote a preface for it, was mocked by Wittgenstein for getting it all wrong, and Wittgenstein mocked MANY others for misunderstanding it throughout his life).
- is boring and a chore to read.
- was later repudiated by Wittgenstein anyway. (Cf. Philosophical Investigations, sections 81, 96, 97, 114)

If you really struggle with PI, try consulting the Hacker & Baker commentary, though frankly they're needlessly dense and come at it from a "reinventing the wheel" analytic perspective that isn't necessary if you weren't raised in that horrible milieu.

Actually, I've never read Rorty, and he seems mediocre to me from what I have seen, but he DOES seem to understand why pragmatism / Wittgensteinian / hermeneutic philosophy syncretically merged in the late 20th century even in Anglo-analytic circles. So you might look into whatever the standard discussion Rorty has of Wittgenstein. I bet you anything he explains him. Though if you're already familiar with pragmatism or continental hermeneuticists like Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, etc., you can probably just read the Philosophical Investigations in an afternoon with no problems.

After PI, the best read is On Certainty, and then whatever else of his occasional writings interest you. If you are into math, RFM is great. I would only go back and read TLP if you're curious about logicism - for my money, Wittgenstein's repudiations of it in PI make it very clear that he was adopting a naive atomist/correspondence theory of logicism in the TLP, whether or not he believed in such a thing metaphysically. (I think the "immanent critique of Frege's logicism" interpretation of the TLP is the most interesting.) If that sounds interesting to you, you might like it. But otherwise it's not why he's famous. He's famous because of his later stuff.

[Anonymous No.13768547]

>>13767931
Has he ever written about his encounters with the young Adolf Hitler, at his school?

[Anonymous No.13768597]

somebody post that pic

[Anonymous No.13769385]

>>13768545
Quality post. Thank you for this.

[Anonymous No.13769429]

>>13768295
No, you're wrong. Wittgenstein was a mystic, if you think he was primarily a philosopher then you missed the point.

[Anonymous No.13769626]

>>13768545
>you can probably just read the Philosophical Investigations in an afternoon with no problems
kek

>After PI, the best read is On Certainty
this