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 NRTIME podcast. For more details about NRTIME and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk forwardslushradio4. |
| 0:09.5 | I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:12.0 | Hello, there's little doubt that Ludwig Wittgenstein was a towering figure in 20th century thought. |
| 0:18.0 | On his return to Cambridge in 1929, Maynard Keane's wrote, |
| 0:22.0 | well, God has arrived. I met him on the 515 train. |
| 0:27.0 | Wittgenstein's credited with being the greatest philosopher of the modern age, |
| 0:31.0 | a thinker who left not one, but two philosophers for his successors to argue over. |
| 0:35.0 | The early Wittgenstein said, |
| 0:37.0 | the limits of my language mean the limits of my world. |
| 0:40.0 | The later Wittgenstein replied, |
| 0:42.0 | 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, |
| 0:55.0 | as he put it, to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle. |
| 0:58.0 | How do you think that language could solve all the problems of philosophy? |
| 1:02.0 | How have his ideas influenced contemporary culture? |
| 1:06.0 | And could he have thought ever achieved the release for us that he hoped it would? |
| 1:10.0 | With me to explore the life in Wittgenstein, |
| 1:13.0 | a Ray Monk, professor of philosophy at the University of Southampton, |
| 1:16.0 | an author of an acclaimed biography of Wittgenstein, |
| 1:19.0 | Mary McGinn, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of York, |
| 1:23.0 | and Barry Smith, senior lecturer in philosophy at Berkburg College London. |
| 1:27.0 | Ray Monk, Wittgenstein was born and educated in Austria before coming to Manchester as an aeronautical engineer. |
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