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From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
- Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful introduction to the man and the work,
By Gulley Jimson (Bethesda, MD) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Paperback)
Aside from a quickly abandoned attempt to read the Tractatus as a pretentious freshman in college, I didn't know anything about Wittgenstein other than a few random facts. The ones that fascinated me were that, after finished his first book, he went off to teach in a rural primary school; that he had been commended for bravery several times in WWI; and that among his last words, when his friends were arriving too late to see him on his deathbed, were "tell them I've had a wonderful life."There was something fascinating about all of this existing in one man, so when a philosophy professor I ran into at a wedding recommended this book as the place to start, I rushed to pick it up. Loosely speaking, great men have two types of lives: the ones devoted to an ethical or aesthetic mission, and the ones whose lives are less streamlined, more variegated. For the former, their lives slip naturally into a type of narrative with a few basic themes: you can see them make progress towards the goal that they have set for themselves. Biographies of people like Gandhi, for example, can be slim and focused. For the others, whose lives are messy and not motivated by a few basic concerns, I prefer baggy biographies, that revel in small details: Ellman's Joyce, for example, or The Life of Johnson. Wittgenstein is a curious combination of the two, because he is almost obsessively motivated by a goal of religious and moral purity that directs his entire life; and yet, his actions (and choice of partners) are so cyclical that occasionally you start losing track of people, and feeling like you've read the chapter before: the same suicidal streak, another timid, gentle male partner. Monk handles this well: he writes beautifully (and colloquially, in the best possible sense) and isn't afraid of passionate engagement. The book is beautifully structured, and the themes that surface continually in Wittgenstein's life are brought up gracefully and juggled with consummate skill. I only occasionally felt like Monk tried too hard to fit Wittgenstein's life into the framework he created. Wittgenstein's love of pulp detective fiction, for example, is supposed to indicate how much he valued intuition instead of a deductive style of reasoning, and connects to the philosophy of the later years? Maybe he just liked detective stories: lots of people have. Monk's desire for a coherent narrative also makes him leave out parts that I thought would be fascinating. He mentions a thank you note of Rilke's that Wittgenstein really liked, but he doesn't quote it; Wittgenstein discusses a poem that he loves with his friend for a whole letter, but the poem is never quoted - it's those kinds of technically unnecessary little bits that might have illuminated a great deal (or just been interesting). But Monk also has an eye for the wonderful detail - and he has clearly dug up almost everything that can be found on W. - like the diary of a 14-year boy whose father he visited. This is also a good introduction to W's work, although not really an in-depth exploration. I disagree with the reviewer who said that this book was a deflation of genius. At the end of this book, I still admired the demands that Wittgenstein made on himself, his honesty, his determination, and his generosity, but I was further convinced that a genius should not be trusted for opinions on any subject but his own narrow discipline. Anyway, read this book; I enjoyed it a lot.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Biography, needless opinions,
By
This review is from: Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Paperback)
I haven't finished the book, but I like it so far. It's really nicely written and quite informative, and the lives of these philosophers is in itself interesting, partly because of them, partly because of the period which is really the foundation of analytic philosophy. But, I just don't like it when Monk adds his assessments about what is 'really' going on in the relationship between Russell and Wittgenstein. It annoys me because it's like a situation in which you have a relationship to another person, you both have an exchange with each other, and then some outsider, someone who does not know your relationship (definitely not like you know it) comes in and says 'Oh, what you're REALLY doing is this'. It's just presumptuous to think that you've uncovered the truth about the relationship between me and him/her. You're merely adding your opinion of what's going on. By itself another opinion is not a problem, the problem is that Monk sometimes speaks or phrases things as if he's telling us the facts that neither of them knew, in other words, that he's telling us what is REALLY going on. It's not that this can't be the case, he could be right, it's just that the tone and attitude bother me.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Edification about and from Wittgenstein,
By
This review is from: Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Paperback)
Monk was substantially assisted in this work by his conversations with the late Rush Rhees, Wittgentein's translator and literary executor. Having myself had the privilege of hearing Rhees lecture on Wittgenstein, this vivid and searching book has all the ring of authenticity.It is at once a biography and a general reader's introduction to Wittgenstein's thought, which brilliantly brings out the fact that the mysteries of meaning in language form a central key to the human condition. Claimed by logical positivists, Wittgenstein's life is arguably a demonstration of what he saw as the inadequacy of a purely secularist framework to meaning in language. Monk successfully brings out the religious and mystical overtones to Wittgenstein's vigorous, propositional labours in philosophy. Monk's treatment of Wittgenstein's 'On Certainty' is a joy to read; in fact, much of the book is tremendously edifying.
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