Reading Wittgenstein (on) Reading: An Introduction

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511616914.001

Reading Wittgenstein (on) Reading: An Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2009

David G. Stern and

Béla Szabados

Edited by

David G. Stern and

Béla Szabados

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David G. Stern: Affiliation:
Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Iowa
Béla Szabados: Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Classics, University of Regina
David G. Stern: Affiliation:
University of Iowa
Béla Szabados: Affiliation:
University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

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Wittgenstein's influences

In 1931, Ludwig Wittgenstein included Otto Weininger on a list he made of ten writers who had influenced him. He wrote:

I think there is some truth in my idea that I am really only reproductive in my thinking. I think I have never invented a line of thinking but that it was always provided for me by someone else & I have done no more than passionately take it up for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann Hertz Schopenhauer Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos Weininger Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me.

The list appears to be arranged according to the chronological order in which they influenced Wittgenstein. One sign of this is the odd punctuation of the list, which is due to the fact that Wittgenstein first wrote just four names – “Frege, Russell, Spengler, Sraffa” – and added the other names, carefully arranged in order, above the line. The first three names are authors Wittgenstein read as a teenager; Frege and Russell first had an impact on him when he was in his early twenties. While Wittgenstein would certainly have known of Kraus and Weininger long before 1914, for both were famous and controversial in fin-de-siècle Vienna, their position on the list, and the fact that Kraus, Loos and Weininger all had an influence on the Tractatus, which was composed during the First World War, suggests that their influence should be dated to the war years, or immediately before.

Type: Chapter
Information: Wittgenstein Reads Weininger , pp. 1 - 28

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511616914.001 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

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References

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Reading Wittgenstein (on) Reading: An Introduction

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