This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warerton.

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Luthic Vikenstein is a philosopher whose ideas and way of expressing them are genuinely

illuminated by a fuller understanding of his life

and the historical context in which he was writing. James Clarga has devoted many years to explaining

the relationship between Vikenstein and the man, his times and his philosophy.

This episode is part of our miniseries BioBites, which focuses on the lives of philosophers.

Jim Claga, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you.

I'm always happy to have a chance to talk about Viscenstein.

We're talking today about, as you say, Wittgenstein,

and the only book, I should say the only philosophy book that he

published in his lifetime which is the Tractatus Logico philosophicus but perhaps you can

begin by telling us a little bit about Wittgenstein's background.

Well, he grew up in one of the richest families in Vienna.

His father was a manufacturing businessman, comparable to the crups in Germany or the

Carnegie's in the United States. Although on the other hand the family was very

cultural. They knew Brahms, Maler, climped painted a wedding portrait for one of Ludwig

sisters. So they were a funny combination of things. He went on to study engineering and then aeronautical engineering where he patented a kind of

propeller, his interest in engineering, and then math led him to an interest in logic and that's sort of what brought him into philosophy.

So he goes from University of Manchester to Cambridge and that's where he meets Bertrand Russell.

...