Wittgenstein and Cambridge Family Resemblances

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I haven’t seen Johnson for a long time but I am going to tea with his sister soon, and unless he is ill I will give him your love (last time I went there he was ill). The third part of his Logic is to be published soon. It deals with Causation. I am so sorry you are using up all your strength struggling with your surroundings; it must be terribly difficult with the other teachers. Are you staying on in Puchberg? When I saw you, you had some idea of leaving if it got too impossible, and becoming a gardener. I can’t write about work, it is such an effort when my ideas are so vague, and I’m going to see you soon. Anyhow I have done little except, I think, made out the proper solution rather in detail of some of the contradictions which made Russell’s Theory of Types unnecessarily complicated, and made him put in the Axiom of Reducibility. I went to see Russell a few weeks ago, and am reading the manuscript of the new stuff he is putting into the Principia. You are quite right that it is of no importance; all it really amounts to is a clever proof of mathematical induction without using the axiom of reducibility. There are no fundamental changes, identity just as it used to be. I felt he was too old: he seemed to understand and say “yes” to each separate thing, but it made no impression so that 3 minutes afterwards he talked on his old lines. Of all your work he seems now to accept only this: that it is nonsense to put an adjective where a substantive ought to be which helps in his theory of types. He indignantly denied ever having said that vagueness is a characteristic of the physical world. He has 2 children now and is very devoted to them. I liked him very much. […] I had a long discussion with Moore the other day, who has grasped more of your work than I should have expected. I’m sorry I’m not getting on better with the foundations of mathematics; I have got several ideas but they are still dim. I hope you are well, and as happy as you can be under the circumstances. It gives me great pleasure that probably I shall see you soon. Ramsey to Keynes, Vienna, 24 March 1924 With regard to Wittgenstein I do not think it is any good at all trying to get him to live any pleasanter a life, or stop the ridiculous waste of his energy and brain. I only see this clearly now because I have got to know one of his sisters and met the rest of the family. They are very rich and extremely anxious to give him money or do anything for him in any way, and he rejects all their advances; even Christmas presents or presents of invalid’s food, when he is ill, he sends back. And this is not because they aren’t on good terms but because he won’t have money he hasn’t earned except for some very specific purpose like to come and see you again. I think he teaches to earn money and would only stop teaching if he had some other way of earning money which was preferable. And it would have to be really earning, he wouldn’t accept any job which seemed in the least to be wangled for him. It is an awful pity; it seems to be the result of a terribly strict upbringing. Three of his brothers committed suicide they were made to work so hard by their father: at one time the eight children had twenty-six private tutors; and their mother took no interest in them. Ramsey to his mother, Puchberg am Schneeberg, 20 September1923 He is prepared to give 4 or 5 hours a day to explaining his book. I have had two days and got through 7 (+ incidental forwards references) out of 80 pages. And when the book is done I shall try to pump him for ideas for its further development which I shall attempt. He says he himself will do nothing more, not because he is bored, but because his mind is no longer flexible. He says no one can do more than 5 or 10 years work at philosophy. (His book took 7.) And he is sure Russell will do nothing more important. His idea of his book is not that anyone by reading it will understand his ideas, but that some day someone will think them out again for himself, and will derive great pleasure from finding in this book their exact expressions. I think he exaggerates his own verbal inspiration, it is much more careful than I supposed but I think it reflects the way the ideas came to him which might not be the same with another man. He has already answered my chief difficulty which I have puzzled over for a year and given up in despair myself and decided he had not seen. (It is not in the 1st 7 pages but arose by the way.) He is great. I used to think Moore a great man but beside W! He says I shall forget everything he explains in a few days; Moore in Norway said he understood W completely and when he got back to England was no wiser than when he started.
It’s terrible when he says “Is that clear” and I say “no” and he says “Damn it’s horrid to go through that again”. Sometimes he says I can’t see that now we must leave it. He often forgot the meaning of what he wrote within 5 minutes, and then remembered it later. Some of his sentences are intentionally ambiguous having an ordinary meaning and a more difficult meaning which he also believes. He is, I can see, a little annoyed that Russell is doing a new edition of Principia because he thought he had shown R that it was so wrong that a new edition would be futile. It must be done altogether afresh. He had a week with Russell 4 years ago. Wittgenstein to his sister Hermine, September 1923 Auch ich konnte jetzt ein paar Tage kaum reden, weil ich in der letzten Zeit den ganzen Tag reden mußte. Vormittags in der Schule und nachmittags mit Ramsey aus Cambridge der beinahe 14 Tage hier geblieben ist. Es war ein Vergnügen auch für mich, wenn auch eine sehr große Anstrengung. – Ramsey wird mir in einiger Zeit ein Exemplar der Abhandlung schicken und das kannst Du dann haben. For a few days, I too could hardly speak as I have had to talk the whole day. Mornings at school and in the afternoon with Ramsey from Cambridge, who has stayed here for nearly a fortnight. It was a pleasure for me too, but at the same time a huge effort. – Ramsey will send me a copy of the Tractatus, which then you can have. Frank Ramsey to G.E. Moore, 14 July 1929 In my opinion Mr Wittgenstein is a philosophic genius of a different order from anyone else I know. This is partly owing to his great gift for seeing what is essential in a problem and partly to his overwhelming intellectual vigour, to the intensity of thought with which he pursues a question to the bottom and never rests content with a mere possible hypothesis. From his work more than that of any other man I hope for a solution of the difficulties that perplex me both in philosophy generally and in the foundation of Mathematics in particular. It seems to me, therefore, peculiarly fortunate that he should have returned to research. During the last two terms I have been in close touch with his work and he seems to me to have made remarkable progress. He began with certain questions in the analysis of propositions which have now led him to problems about infinity which lie at the root of current controversies on the foundations of Mathematics. At first I was afraid that lack of mathematical knowledge and facility would prove a serious handicap to his working in this field. But the progress he had made has already convinced me that this is not so, and that here too he will probably do work of the first importance. He is now working very hard and, so far as I can judge he is getting on well. For him to be interrupted by lack of money would be a great misfortune for philosophy. – F.R. Leavis, Memoirs of Wittgenstein [A]s midnight approached I said, as if suddenly recalling the fact: “Didn’t you tell me that you were reading a paper to the Aristotelian Society at Nottingham tomorrow?” I added, by way of reinforcing the stimulus: “lt’s nearly twelve”. He exclaimed: “I’m a bloody fool! – Walk back with me.” […] Arrived at the front door, I knocked, and said to Wittgenstein: “You’ll go to bed at once, won’t you?” He answered, with the inertness of exhaustion: “You don’t understand. When I’m engaged on a piece of work I’m always afraid I shall die before I’ve finished it. So I make a fair copy of the day’s work, and give it to Frank Ramsey for safe-keeping. I haven’t made today’s copy.” […] I was walking once with Wittgenstein when I was moved, by something he said, to remark, with a suggestion of innocent inquiry in my tone: “You don’t think much of most other philosophers, Wittgenstein?” – “No. Those I have my use for you could divide into two classes. Suppose I was directing someone of the first to Emmanuel” – it was then my college – “I should say: ‘You see that steeple over there? Emmanuel is three hundred and fifty yards to the west-southwest of it’. That man, the first class, would get there. Hm! very rare – in fact I’ve never met him. To the second I should say: ‘You go a hundred yards straight ahead, turn half-left and go forty’ . . . and so on. That man would ultimately get there. Very rare too; in fact I don’t know that I’ve met him.” Thereupon I asked, referring to the well-known young Cambridge genius (who was to die while still young): “What about Frank Ramsey?” – “Ramsey? He can see the next step if you point it out.”
Page 1 and 2: Wittgenstein and Cambridge Family R
Page 3 and 4: Ludwig Wittgenstein born in Vienna
Page 5: and as practically all of Wittgenst
Page 8 and 9: Russell to Wittgenstein’s mother
Page 11 and 12: G.E. Moore to F.A. Hayek [At] the b
Page 13: Wittgenstein to O.K. Bouwsma during
Page 16 and 17: Wittgenstein to Keynes, October/Nov
Page 19: Wittgenstein to Ramsey, Summer 1923
Page 24 and 25: philosophical genius of a different
Page 26 and 27: “But even if in such cases I cann
Page 28 and 29: espected, warned that the atom bomb
Page 30 and 31: sich immer fragen: Wird denn dieses
Page 32 and 33: Wittgenstein’s composite photogra

Wittgenstein and Cambridge Family Resemblances

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