Wittgenstein

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2003

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, work and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is little doubt that he was a towering figure of the twentieth century; on his return to Cambridge in 1929 Maynard Keynes wrote, “Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train”.Wittgenstein is credited with being the greatest philosopher of the modern age, a thinker who left not one but two philosophies for his descendents to argue over: The early Wittgenstein said, “the limits of my mind mean the limits of my world”; the later Wittgenstein replied, “If God looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of”. Language was at the heart of both. Wittgenstein stated that his purpose was to finally free humanity from the pointless and neurotic philosophical questing that plagues us all. As he put it, “To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”.How did he think language could solve all the problems of philosophy? How have his ideas influenced contemporary culture? And could his thought ever achieve the release for us that he hoped it would?With Ray Monk, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and author of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius; Barry Smith, Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; Marie McGinn, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, there's little doubt that Ludwig Wittgenstein was a towering figure in 20th
0:17.1	century thought.
0:18.7	On his return to Cambridge in 1929, Maynard Keynes wrote, Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 515 train.
0:27.0	Vicken Science credited with being the greatest philosopher of the modern age, a thinker who left not
0:32.0	one but two philosophers for successes to
0:34.6	our gerbar. The early Wittgenstein said,
0:37.0	The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. The later Wittgenstein
0:41.4	replied, if God looked into our minds, he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.
0:47.0	Wittgenstein stated that his purpose was finally to free humanity from the pointless and neurotic philosophical questing that plagues us all, as he put it, to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.
0:59.0	How did he think that language could solve all the problems of philosophy. How did his how have his ideas
1:04.6	influence contemporary culture and could his thought ever achieve the release for us that
1:09.5	he hoped it would. With me to explore the life of work in Wittgenstein are Ray Monk, professor of philosophy at the University of Southampton,
1:16.0	and author of an acclaimed biography of Wittgenstein.
1:19.0	Mary McGinn, senior lecture in Philosophy at the University of York, and Barry Smith Senior Lecture in Philosophy at the University of York and Barry Smith Senior Lecture in Philosophy
1:25.0	at Birkbeck College London.
1:27.0	Raymond Wittgenstein was born and educated in Austria before coming to Manchester as an aeronautical engineer.
1:33.0	That's one move, and the next move is from Manchester and engineering
1:36.5	to Cambridge and philosophy.
1:38.0	Can you briskly describe those two moves?
1:41.8	Okay, starting with Vienna.
	...

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