Curious about the ways humans use their minds and hearts to distract themselves from the meaninglessness of life.
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6 thoughts on “Secret lives of the philosophers”
For an excursion into the depths of Wittgenstein’s self-loathing (particularly disturbing to me because so much of it is mediated by Christianity) this book is a good resource:
I had always taken it as an inspiring remark, by someone with the authority of a genuinely unhappy life, about the consolations of philosophy — that it offers a kind of fulfillment that can compensate for, or even redeem (in this life), the unhappiness. But after reading the intense torment and self-loathing in the notebooks linked in the first comment above, and especially after seeing how mired in Christianity his attempts at self-improvement were, I’ve lost my faith in his assertion.
I’ve thought it was a remark calculated to put his friends’ minds at ease. But this only shows how out of touch he was with them, I think. No one (I’m guessing) could have thought he meant it when he said he had a wonderful life.
USUPhilosophy 
For an excursion into the depths of Wittgenstein’s self-loathing (particularly disturbing to me because so much of it is mediated by Christianity) this book is a good resource:
http://books.google.com/books?id=LiwgjNiHkm4C
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Interesting podcast interview with author of House of Wittgenstein:
“I go along with Nietzsche on this. I think the death bed is an area for general showing off, and I would suggest that [Wittgenstein’s assertion that he’d had ‘a wonderful life’] was a bit of pantomime.”
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=98667903567&h=HTltK&u=aUC3y&ref=nf
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Here’s the correct link:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2554850.htm
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I have always thought Witt’s last words sounded a bit staged and calculated.
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I had always taken it as an inspiring remark, by someone with the authority of a genuinely unhappy life, about the consolations of philosophy — that it offers a kind of fulfillment that can compensate for, or even redeem (in this life), the unhappiness. But after reading the intense torment and self-loathing in the notebooks linked in the first comment above, and especially after seeing how mired in Christianity his attempts at self-improvement were, I’ve lost my faith in his assertion.
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I’ve thought it was a remark calculated to put his friends’ minds at ease. But this only shows how out of touch he was with them, I think. No one (I’m guessing) could have thought he meant it when he said he had a wonderful life.
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