![]() ![]() ![]() On several occasions in the 1930s Wittgenstein made confessions to friends and family, in writing and in person. Influenced by Tolstoy’s romanticized vision of the self-cultivation developed by working and living among peasants, Wittgenstein began teaching in poor, rural villages. Believing he’d solved all the problems of philosophy in his soon-to-be-published “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” (1921), his focus turned to self-improvement. In 1919, straight out of the Austro-Hungarian army, he trained to be an elementary-school teacher and taught in Austria from 1920 to 1926. But a few biographical points are helpful here. It is not surprising, then, that he saw the act of confession as a way of escaping self-deception.ĭespite the reverence Wittgenstein inspires in intellectual history, he remains an enigmatic figure. Wittgenstein, who is regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, was by most accounts a deeply sincere and unsparingly self-critical man who spent much of his life in a struggle with self-transformation. Facing up to self-deception also demands personal change. It forces us to confront things hidden, from others and from ourselves. He wanted to confess his role in an incident that had plagued his conscience for more than a decade.Ĭonfession, as most of us know, takes courage, especially when what you confess reflects regrettable behavior or an unpleasant character. It was 1937 and Ludwig Wittgenstein had just arrived at the house of his Russian teacher, Fania Pascal, in Cambridge. ![]()
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