Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951

Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher whose work transformed 20th-century analytic philosophy. His 1921 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, written largely while he served in the First World War, set out a picture theory of language and concluded with the famous injunction that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. He spent the next decade away from professional philosophy before returning to Cambridge and developing a quite different later philosophy, posthumously published as the Philosophical Investigations, which examines language as a set of rule-governed activities embedded in forms of life. Both works have shaped subsequent philosophy of language, mind, and logic. He inherited one of the largest fortunes in Europe but gave it away and lived simply for most of his life.