Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Vividly told and personalized dedication
Review: It's like a painting of an era of truthful experience of life and friendship, between Norman Malcolm, the author and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher, where honest intellect fulfilled the most part of it. Being a respectful philosopher, a deadly serious lecturer, mostly, an intellect vigorously searching for truth and nothing else, Ludwig Wittgenstein is certainly living vividly through out this memoire.

Rating:
Summary: The Philosophical Personality
Review: Malcolm's memoir, written as a straightforward account of his relationship with Wittgenstein over a number of years, vividly brings to life the odd charisma of the philosopher. It is easy to see, just from Malcolm's account, how Wittgenstein's personality influenced or overwhelmed people around him. Malcolm himself seems to have avoided a full dose of the spell, and simply accepted Wittgenstein as he was, which makes him a superior memoirist. (Furthermore, Malcolm was scrupulious enough that, upon reading his memior, I guessed from it that Wittgenstein was gay, long before I read any of the more heavy-handed books that claim new revelations about the philosopher. It was all already there for them to see, if they would just look at it.) Malcolm's accounts of conversations with Wittgenstein, and even more so the selection of letters included at the end of the volume, amply display the philosopher's character, as well as revealing his rather dry and odd wit and ability to produce aphoristic phrases of great, and sometimes comic, insight. I would strongly recommend giving it to a student who has taken a semester or two of philosophy; even though it won't tell him much about the content of Wittgenstein's actual philosophy, it does provide a serious, and fascinating, example of a way to approach philosophy, and makes the subject seem like it can be an exciting and live quest.

Rating:
Summary: The Philosophical Personality
Review: Malcolm's memoir, written as a straightforward account of his relationship with Wittgenstein over a number of years, vividly brings to life the odd charisma of the philosopher. It is easy to see, just from Malcolm's account, how Wittgenstein's personality influenced or overwhelmed people around him. Malcolm himself seems to have avoided a full dose of the spell, and simply accepted Wittgenstein as he was, which makes him a superior memoirist. (Furthermore, Malcolm was scrupulious enough that, upon reading his memior, I guessed from it that Wittgenstein was gay, long before I read any of the more heavy-handed books that claim new revelations about the philosopher. It was all already there for them to see, if they would just look at it.) Malcolm's accounts of conversations with Wittgenstein, and even more so the selection of letters included at the end of the volume, amply display the philosopher's character, as well as revealing his rather dry and odd wit and ability to produce aphoristic phrases of great, and sometimes comic, insight. I would strongly recommend giving it to a student who has taken a semester or two of philosophy; even though it won't tell him much about the content of Wittgenstein's actual philosophy, it does provide a serious, and fascinating, example of a way to approach philosophy, and makes the subject seem like it can be an exciting and live quest.

Rating:
Summary: A vivid memory
Review: Norman Malcolm was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein's. They exchanged many letters and the reader can discover the 56 letters that Wittgenstein sent to Malcolm between March 26 1940 to April 16 1951 in this book.
Norman Malcolm does not discuss Wittgenstein's philosophical works - although he attended a respectable number of his lectures - but describes the philosopher in his daily life, his tastes, his talks with his fellows in Cambridge. It is interesting to learn that Wittgenstein was an emphatic talker both while lecturing and conversing privately, that he dressed as simply as possible although he had rigorous standards of cleanliness and that his room at Trinity College was austerely furnished.
His lectures were quite original. He didn't address his audience in a formal way but the meetings - in his room where the members of the class had to bring chairs - were rather a conversation during which Wittgenstein carried on original research. He was usually impatient and easily angered and his students often feared him. Making friendship with Wittgenstein was very exacting since his extreme harshness could rebuke a friend. Malcolm often experienced that Wittgenstein had a tendency to be suspicious of motives and character. It was always a strain to be with Wittgenstein because of the intellectual demands of his conversation and his ruthless severity. This was due to his passionate love of truth and that is the reason why his philosophical thoughts tortured and exhausted him. He detested academic life, he could not stand the society of his academic colleagues and could not suffer all forms of affectation and insincerity. His mood was often sombre because of the difficulty of achieving understanding in philosophy. As he struggled to work through a problem, his listeners felt that they were in the presence of real suffering. That may explain his strong inclination to pessimism, a feeling that was often close to despair. Another source of torment was that he felt himself to be a failure as a teacher, a profession he abandoned after a few years to devote himself exclusively to philosophy.
Towards the end of his life, Wittgenstein spent long months with Malcolm and his wife in America where Malcolm could witness Wittgenstein's increasing difficulty to concentrate and think, mainly because of his fragile health. A moving memory of one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century.