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Title: Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk ISBN: 0-14-015995-9 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (22 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Genius Deflated
Comment: As a college student, I, too, fell under the Wittgenstein spell and though that I had discovered the one true incorruptible genius. Ah to be young again.
This book, however, gave me new insights into Wittgenstein and, even more important, the value of genius itself. Monk's clear and elegant writing does an excellent job of laying out the territory of Wittgenstein's ideas, and he offers up a weatlth of lovingly presented detail that situate us right in there in Vienna, in Cambridge, in the energy of those times and places.. He details the scope of LVW's contribution and the shape of his insights so that even non-philosophers will be able to understand it all quite well. Anyone interested in understanding what Wittgenstein actually wrote and said, what his philosophy entailed, can do a lot worse than read this book--there is so much Wittgenstein garbage out there that is just wrong. Monk at least gets it right and for that he should be commended.
But it goes much further. Duty is the issue. What does Wittenstein do with his insights and ideas?
Wittgenstein emerges as an arrgogant and pretty unpleasant fellow with many charming and odd personaily traits (including many shared by your average 12 year old boy) struggling to live in concert with his complex and marvelous ideas. This book is about that struggle more than anything and it is about, I think, what philosophy is for, which, for any Wittgensteinian, is really the question to answer.
This is a great book. Any smart person who likes ideas--even if they aren't interested in philosophy per se might enjoy this for its very satisfying, even gossipy, renderings of intellectual hotbeds and characters and its unique focus on genius in relation to duty--goodness and knowledge--together.
Rating: 5
Summary: With this book, you may find a friend in Wittgenstein
Comment: Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein has correctly been called 'definitive'. In the introduction he states as his goal the writing of a biography which neglects neither the humanity of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, nor his philosophical views, complicated though they may be. He succeeds brilliantly. The result is that the reader is treated to two books at once: one on 'the man', and one on his thought.
Monk's is a tough job. If you know anything about Wittgenstein, you know he is enigmatic - both in terms of his personality and lifestyle, and also his perplexing, yet genius, philosophical views. Yet Monk presents both in as transparent a manner as is perhaps possible, given the nature of his subject. The book is eminently readable, which makes it length a ~positive~ feature. For example, I read the book a chapter at a time, to savour it. The readability comes in large part through Monk's extensive quotations from Wittgenstein's own diary and letters, and the letters of those who corresponded with him. This means that one is transported back to Wittgenstein's world, instead of reading just the dry prose of a biographer (Monk's own writing, of course, is anything but dry).
Most importantly, though, Monk presents Wittgenstein in such a way that many people will be able to befriend this incredible and mysterious man. Wittgenstein was driven by passions - his need to express his thought in a way intelligible and meaningful to others drove him close to suicide on several occasions. He was a man deeply in need of feeling that he was 'understood' - both philosophically and humanly - which were the same for him. (Thus his mentor for a time Bertrand Russell failed on both accounts, as Monk finely illustrates). He loved his friends and detested all things which he considered base. He was a logician who broke down logic, a philosopher who wanted to put an end to much of philosophy, a hermit, a mystic.
There is a mystique about Wittgenstein, and rightfully so. Those who read this book will either find him an eccentric, or they will in a way fall in love with this man. Either way, you will walk away with insight into one of the most startling, influential and powerful minds of our time.
Rating: 5
Summary: Must reading for a better sense of the man
Comment: I had been familiar with the Kenny book "Wittgenstein" and "Wittgenstein's Vienna" but after having read Monk's vol 1 on Russell knew this would be an excellent read. Oddly enough it left me with the question, "Are geniuses born or made?" Much of what Monk did for us with this book was give us a solid feel for the life of the person within which the philosophy could make sense. Why did Wittgenstein write the way he did? Answered. What issues drove him? Answered. I would say this book is must reading for a better sense of the man.
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Title: Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, With a Revised English Translation by Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. M. Anscombe, Elizabeth Anscombe ISBN: 0631231277 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
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Title: On Certainty by Ludwig Wittgenstein ISBN: 0061316865 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 06 October, 1972 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (Routledge Classics) by Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Francis Pears, Brian McGuinness, Bertrand Russell ISBN: 0415254086 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Blue & Brown Books by Ludwig Wittgenstein ISBN: 0061312118 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 July, 1942 List Price(USD): $14.50 |
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Title: Wittgenstein's Poker : The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers by David Edmonds, John Eidinow ISBN: 0060936649 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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