[Errancer]

I always felt like Wittgenstein deeply hated philosophy and all his work was aimed at showing its meaninglessness. That is why I felt that despite the theoretical opposition between his early and late work they are continuous. The proofs has changed but the claim remained the same. But his hatred was sourced in the fact that he couldn't stop himself from engaging into it and found this desire deeply stupid and despicable so again and again he had to show himself that this is futile but as it is with philosophy every time you think you made a point a new angle revels itself and you need to adjust the argument ad nausea. So in this sense I find his preference for stupid movies understandable. The ability to just stop thinking about what you consider irresolvable, meaningless problems is a blessing and dumb pop fiction is a safe space with no traps that would cause you to think anew some problems. Now, none of what I said is backed by any research really. I haven't read his biography and I might be projecting my own experience, but I feel like there are some experiences a prolonged engagement in philosophy causes and they are quite difficult to explain to people who have not went through them. Like, you can pick up St. Augustine or Kierkegaard and I feel that they want to scream their lungs out the exact same insight. Kierkegaard had similar relation to the theatre as far as I remember. Anyway, there is no clear point to my comment. I guess I am interested what others are thinking.

[beezlebroxxxxxx]

I find Wittgenstein's work in PI to be actually pretty therapeutic. He's not really insistent on finding the solution to a philosophical problem. His method is more about dissolving seemingly intractable philosophical problems by patient analysis of the assumptions hidden in our use of language. Seen in that way, his philosophical work is less focused on capital T truth, and more on clarification. We know for a fact though that he did struggle with coming up with his method, that it caused him something like mental anguish for his perfectionist mindset; but I don't think that reveals something inherent about the nature of philosophy. Instead, I think that reveals how terribly knotted our ways of thinking can get when we engage in language games that are seemingly intractable for 1000s of years.

His biography is actually incredible. I would recommend it; he lived through incredible disaster, tragedy, and triumph. He was an odd man to say the least, but he was also a brilliant philosopher, arguably the 20th century's most important.

[dan00]

The deeper your questions go, the less likely you will find answers for them. If you insist to find an answer, can't continue living without finding it, you're going to have a quite miserable life.

The mind is an incredible tool, but if you point it against yourself it can give you the worst suffering possible.

[mdp2021]

> I always felt like Wittgenstein deeply hated philosophy and all his work was aimed at showing its meaninglessness

Well, Wittgenstein was an Engineer - he started (then) leaning towards Aeronautics, which brought him to Mathematics, which brought him to Foundational Formal Logic, which brought him to Bertrand Russell (after Gottlob Frege), which brought him to Philosophy.

It is kind of normal for foundationalists and engineers to be "discriminating" towards "solidity".

But is effort was positive towards obtaining "discriminating logical engines".

[kafkaesque]

Wittgenstein's anti-intellectualism was quite well-known and he voiced his displeasure towards intellectualism during his time.

Really, this is the root of a lot of his philosophy. It was to prove intellectuals wrong. For some of us, he was right. Reading any philosophy book, we joke that it takes a philosopher 20-some odd pages to get to the punchline. Why? No idea. Philosophers love to hear themselves talk and love to meander.

[programmer_dude]

Nit: replace went with gone.

[mdp2021]

If we have this branch, also 'ad nauseam'. But let's face it, we do not have all the time in the world to polish what we are composing here, so there will be errors.

[Errancer]

This one is funny since I deliberately checked how to write it correctly and I found the form 'ad nauseam' annnnd somehow left it in the incorrect form. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Errancer]

huh, I thought this was a correct use. Thanks!