I spent a week in Vienna recently on a Wittgenstein pilgrimage of sorts. Discovering him at 17 was a pretty important moment in my life. I had recently been sent away from my mother’s house by the police, and ended up living in the countryside in the south west of France, in the house of my aunt’s boyfriend-at-the-time. He was a kind giant, a farmer, and some of my only company during that year.
At the time, I knew I was leaving on my 18th birthday, away somewhere. But I was not sure where that would be. As it happened, I talked to a friend who had recently moved from Japan to New Zealand and suggested to have me come there and work with him. I did the paperwork, bought a plane ticket and was ready to fly on my 18th birthday.
In the meantime, I had some time to kill. I used to play Dota 2 pretty competitively back then, so some of my time was spent on that. I was not as driven as I am now, in some ways and so spent a lot of time wasting myself.
Still, being in the middle of nowhere for near a year, I had a lot of time to reflect. There was no town around, and fields all around. I knew there were things I should use this time to deal with. I started trying to meditate and think. It was a confusing, anxious but oddly peaceful time. I would see my aunt every now and then (my mom’s identical twin sister!) and could talk to her about my interests. I remember that time fondly.
But back to my recent Vienna trip, I have to talk about Wittgenstein. I discovered him during that year. I don’t quite recall how, but I was on a journey to try and read some of the Greeks, and found out about Schopenhauer. He was the first philosopher I really enjoyed, and I devoured a lot of his writings for a while. It felt like he could express some things I already knew, and had some interesting thoughts on art and especially music. I decided that German philosophy must be superior because it is written more clearly, it seems more surgical. While looking around, I ended up finding out about the Tractatus, reading it and being enthralled by it. Still, it was such a strange, short but dense few pages that I wanted to know more about Wittgenstein. What kind of man was he? And so I read The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk.
During the reading of that book is when I first fell in love with Wittgenstein. I remember crying and being inconsolable by the time the book reaches 1951 and he passes away.
This was an important moment for me, because for the years prior, I had a very negative view of philosophy. I was a typical “engineer-brained” computer kid and thought all of it was ridiculous, and that the only thing one should be interested in is problems that are in this world, and if a problem could be stated at all, it could be solved. But Wittgenstein felt like he approached things with a mathematical coldness (but the soul of a tortured artist) that I really liked. It brought me into a new world, with characters like Russell, Brouwer, Hilbert and others. Things like the Vienna Circle, Schlick, other Viennese intellectuals like Weininger, Kraus etc…
To cut it short, I spent months and months with the Tractatus. Thinking about it, talking about it, writing about it. His biography had a tremendous impact on me too. Then, I flew to New Zealand and a different chapter of my life started, still with me revisiting these initial feelings and thoughts I had, but also continuing down the rabbit hole over time.
A couple of years after this, back from New Zealand, my closest friend, whom I met right during that obsessive Wittgenstein period, suggested that we should visit Vienna together, as much of our early friendship was defined or themed around him. Life did not go that way and we did not visit Vienna together (although I am sure we will before it is too late).
Still, now thirteen years later, I had been feeling like I wanted to go to Vienna and see it for myself. Or rather, my girlfriend and I each listed cities we might want to go to in January, and both of our lists had Vienna. I wanted to go to where the Vienna Circle met, I wanted to see where Ludwig might have grown up (although the family’s palace has been torn down), where his influences might have lived. Boltzmann, Beethoven (a lot of namesakes!), Mach and others. There is also the house he designed for his sister!Haus Wittgenstein, designed for his sister Margaret. Now the Bulgarian cultural center in Vienna, and a bit of a pain in the ass to get into. ↩︎ And the Grand Cafe!
So, my girlfriend, our dog and I went to Vienna last week, and I got to spend time in a lot of the places I wanted. Places where the Vienna Circle met, the Murder StaircaseWhere Moritz Schlick was assassinated by a former student in 1936. ↩︎, various Gödel sites around the city and lounging in Viennese cafes (including the Grand Cafe, a favorite of Popper’s!). The city might be different a century later and the fabric of that culture nearly erased, but still, something hung in the air for me. Maybe just the fact that it is the same place in space already gave it a certain nostalgia and weight. Sitting in the Grand Cafe, even post-reconstruction, with a mind full of thoughts on mathematics and research and things I want to write and do, felt neat, even if somewhat cliché.
After a few days there, my girlfriend had the idea that we should visit some bookstores, in quest for books from Wittgenstein I always wanted to have, and because I have been building up my core collection for my study room. We found this wonderful bookshop, Shakespeare, with an entire shelf of various editions of publications from or about Wittgenstein, and I bought nearly all of them!
One of the books I bought was the only one I did not know on that Wittgenstein shelf: a biography by Anthony Gottlieb titled “Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes”, which released in 2025, the first Wittgenstein biography in about 30 years.
I devoured it in 3 days, and have some thoughts about it. I think it was a very fresh, unique angle to a Wittgenstein biography. It spends a lot of time with Ludwig’s father, Karl, and his life and how he became the ever-powerful business magnate he was. It even spends time with Karl’s father and traces down the family’s history, the influence that culture had on them and the incredibly important place that music had in Karl and his children’s lives. Some time is spent on Ludwig’s siblings and the various people that inspired him the most during his youth. From Boltzmann to Kraus to Hertz, Weininger and others. For me, this was an absolute pleasure to read from that angle.
This is not a biography to learn about Wittgenstein’s philosophy or life more than it is a portrait of his milieu. However, if you already know Wittgenstein, then this is a wonderful waltz through the times he lived in, the people around him, his influences, his relationship with Vienna, what close ones thought of him.
At times, Gottlieb (maybe rightfully so) is quite harsh on him, and there are (again, rightfully so considering the book is part of a “Jewish Lives” series) many mentions of his relationship with his Jewish origins, his thoughts on Jews, his influences’ thoughts on Jews, etc… Gottlieb is also quick to point out some of the biggest dichotomies and contradictions in Wittgenstein’s life. Still, I think he captures something brilliantly about him, by taking you through many of the things that were around him. The people and places and the times in history.
Gottlieb’s angle elucidated a few things for me. Wittgenstein’s complicated relationship with his father and the impact he had on his life, and what kind of man his father was. I found a lot of the thoughts I had on education in Karl’s approach to raising his children. Clearly, his approach did not entirely pan out considering 3 out of 5 of the Wittgenstein sons ended their lives earlyHans, Rudolf, and Kurt. Paul, the one-armed pianist, and Ludwig survived. ↩︎, and the two others (and especially Wittgenstein) seemed to have this unwashable stain on their will to live that made them contemplate suicide often. I do think their education (which was fully commandeered by Karl) had a big part in this.
It also reminded me of how large a part music played in his life. Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven were central to what culture meant to him and also what it meant for it to decay. Gottlieb mentions his whistling several times, which I had completely forgotten: he could apparently whistle entire movements from memory, which was a “skill” that deserved its own name in Austria.
One thing I had half forgotten and half never truly realized is how Ludwig came off to other people, past the near-manic obsessed logician and philosopher quirks. I had read about his family, I knew they were a very important and rich one, but it never quite sank in like it did in this book. He really seemed to have had a princely attitude to him. Another thing I found fascinating is that there is some sort of explanation or theory about Wittgenstein’s spoken quirks. He was known to make aphorisms after aphorisms, and as it turns out from people talking about attending evenings at the Wittgenstein Palace, they seem to have all done that.
Even while reading, I found myself a bit exhausted to be “around” Wittgenstein and wished that Gottlieb had spent more time writing about the people around him.
It was a wonderful read, immersive and elating at times and full of crunchy anecdotes, some I knew and some I learned about. Most of all, it reminded me of how hard he was on himself and how wearing it must have been to be around him. It made me think about how many traits of character I feel like we share. In temperament and in capacity to exasperate people around us and tire them, while self-flagellating on the way. So many of the things said about him, or to him, sound like things people close to me have said about me. Uglily, in reading this, I felt both a sense of nasty pride about it along with a lot of shame. Shame for being that way, but also shame that I have less “grounds” than Wittgenstein to be like this, when I am not as great.