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Two thinkers, side by side

Life

1872 CE – 1970 CE

AnalyticModernBritish

He spent the first half of his career inventing analytic philosophy and the second half annoying governments. Both projects lasted.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1889 CE – 1951 CE

AnalyticModernAustrian

Born Vienna

He wrote two complete philosophies that contradict each other. Both became influential. He disowned the first while writing the second.

Connection

Bertrand Russell teacher and discoverer Ludwig Wittgenstein — Russell recognized Wittgenstein's genius from their first meetings at Cambridge and introduced the Tractatus to the English-speaking world. He later found he could not follow where Wittgenstein went next.

Shared Ideas

Reason

Shared Places

Cambridge Cambridge

Ideas

Reason Empiricism Ockham's Razor

Logos Reason

Words

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
— Bertrand Russell

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”
— Bertrand Russell

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Key Moments

1910-13

Principia Mathematica with Whitehead

1918

Imprisoned for anti-war activism

July 1955

Russell-Einstein Manifesto for nuclear disarmament

1914-21

Tractatus written during the First World War

1929

Returns to philosophy at Cambridge

29 April 1951

Death in Cambridge

Works

The Problems of Philosophy

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus