Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Certainly one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. I haven’t read as many biographies as I’d like, but the incidence of biographies as a percent of the books I’ve read is quite high. On the other hand, however, I might be a bit biased in favor of the genre. Still, I can be sure this is — as the New York Times stated — a ‘first-rate’ biography.

I didn’t read it for the philosophy, which I’m not sure I’d understand yet anyways, but to get a picture of the man himself. For what it’s worth, I do have the general outline of Early Wittgenstein’s ideas, but my knowledge of his later ideas is foggier. Wittgenstein is one of the few philosophers whose philosophy — or really whose work in philosophy — is unrepresentative of the man himself. Maybe even contradictory. On the other hand, this really chimes with the last statement of the TLP, ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent’, and his dismissive attitude of philosophy in general.

The man himself was half-part mathematician, and the other half-mystic — which is one of the rarer (and my favorite, perhaps) archetypes. My favorite parts, therefore, were when he was struggling spiritually — in the midst of World War I, his troubles after the war as a teacher, his troubles in the environment of Cambridge, and so on. I can empathize with the impact of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche on his thoughts generally. Granted, since his philosophy wasn’t concerned with such matters (he preferred to leave them unsaid), you wouldn’t notice it through reading his main works — as you would with reading, say, Nietzsche.

Definitely read it. It’s ~700 pages, and I zoomed through the first 500 or so. It became a bit of a slog, later on, but I got through it.

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