However, despite illuminating much that was central to linguists about – say, meaning – neither his early philosophy nor his later thought tried to define what language actually is. Thus, while his early work dovetailed with that of people like Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, his later work contradicted it. By the early 1940s Wittgenstein seemed to be taking back all that he had said about formal logic as the foundation of human knowledge, turning instead to a pragmatic conception of language from which logic disappeared. In fact, the Tractatus was two books in one, and they were at odds with each other. ![]() His solution, he thought, did not even touch upon the genuine human problems relating to ethics and the meaning of life at all. However, he seemed to negate his own conclusion in insisting that his “definitive and unassailable” solution to the problems of philosophy merely showed how little was thereby accomplished: what we have to pass over in silence. Wittgenstein’s dazzling achievement was a crystal clear formulation of the concepts underlying logic as the basis of scientific knowledge: what can be said clearly. When Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicusappeared in 1921, what emerged both thrilled and chilled Russell – and the nascent Vienna Circle. He began to work in philosophy in 1912, assisting Bertrand Russell at Cambridge University in reformulating the conceptual framework of Russell’s Principia Mathematica by re-writing its first eleven chapters. He was interested in the nature and limits of knowledge, relentlessly pursuing that theme, ultimately becoming aware that language permeates human living. First off, he did not aim at investigating language, nor did producing a theory of language ever interest him. That role, like everything surrounding Wittgenstein, was a paradoxical one. The 20th century discovered language, and nobody played a larger role in that discovery than the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
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