I really enjoyed reading this, and you can add Wittgenstein to the people I’d have liked to have met – and maybe even have had a beer with. No higher honour than that.
He’s portrayed her quite differently from what I’ve previously read. There’s some explanation for that in the text, about how Bertrand Russell put it about that he come out of the war a bit of a wreck. I’m pretty sure that Wittgenstein was an unusual character, but I reckon that most genius is. He seems to be well-balanced, though I’m sure he suffered from some of the same challenges the rest of us do. A man like him is always going to rouse opinion and be subject to unusual scrutiny and analysis. And, through the years, reinterpretation. No wonder he’s a character hat’s coloured some of the commentaries about him also.
I don’t know the truth of him because we never met, but I’m happy to consider him a man first, who also possessed an unusual insight into the forms the world took, and which he challenged.
I find some of his methods, explained in this piece, particularly attractive. He appears a free spirit, indifferent to the petty characters who sought to take him down, and confident in his beliefs.
Have a read:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n22/jonathan-ree/the-young-man-one-hopes-for