Philosophy of language 4: Picture theory of language

The fourth lecture of the course Philosophy of language. You can find more study materials at sites.google.com/view/filiptvrdy. If you find a mistake, please write an email to [e-mail].

[@Deantrey]

Regarding some biographical details. As regarding his resignation from the Austrian school: Biographical work has revealed that he actually did not use severe corporeal punishment and that this was largely a fabrication by the villagers. What they really took issue with was his teaching girls mathematics, or rather, his expecting them to be capable of learning it. It was that he was teaching them as if they were boys, rather than his mistreatment of them, that was the real problem.
As for his bullying Hitler, even if it did occur I doubt it would have been the motivation for Hitler's antisemitism as historical investigation into that has not demonstrated any evidence that Hitler was an explicit antisemite until after the first World War. If his hatred of Jewish people began from early childhood it's hard to see why it waited until after the first world war to express itself. It is more likely that Hitler was "radicalized" by material he read or came into contact with as his political ambitions and views started to take a more definite shape, or that he saw antisemitism as a useful way to mobilize the German people towards his cause, or that he himself was simply incapable of confronting the reality of the German loss of the war and sought mental refuge in antisemitic conspiracy theories. In any case, he did not need to invent reasons for hating Jewish people as this was a very common thing in Germany, and indeed in all of Europe, at that time. Positing that it was Wittgenstein's behavior towards him rather than the overwhelming prevalence of antisemitic views more generally strikes me as irrational. Why would Wittgenstein need highly specific personal reasons to hate Jewish people when millions of his fellow countrymen did not? There are many problems with that book but just on its face its thesis makes no sense.

[@filiptvrdy]

Thank you for your remarks; I appreciate them. Could you please provide a source to support your statements? While I am skeptical about Cornish’s book, the information regarding corporal punishment is drawn from the highly respected Monk’s biography "Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius" (New York: The Free Press, 1990, chapter 9).