Ludwig Wittgenstein - On Certainty

"Reading Wittgenstein put an end to my interest in philosophy. If philosophy is about the kinds of language games that Wittgenstein played, it wasn't worth my time."


"Wittgenstein was a man who despised all things metaphysical and spiritual. He fancied himself a no-nonsense objectivist who would not be hoodwinked by false religious promises or tricked into seeing intangible ghosts ... Wittgenstein's solipsism has spiraled out of control and taken on a life of its own. For him the self is everything; all so-called objective entities spring from the subjective self, leaving us with no real objctive reality or atomic facts at all. All we are left with is Wittgenstein, the self-appointed possessor, owner, and sovereign monarch of the known universe. None of us exist unless Wittgenstein invites us into his little world, and we cease to exist the moment we exit his field of vision. I, for one, take exception to this. Hey Wittgenstein: - I exist - get used to it - I'm here to stay - you cannot expel me from the universe - the world does not revolve around you!"


"Wittgenstein was a fucking fruit loop."


"I own both the Tractatus and the Blue and Brown books and think that Wittgenstein was a fucking joke. If one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Metaphysically speaking, this means that no one should speak, and cannot speak, because all of Wittgenstein's beloved logic is based upon a group of axioms, a group of unprovables that demand that we do not speak, nay, that we do not even think."

Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations II

"He seems to idle on the same questions over and over again with not much progress, very seldomly really applying his own method to them. Such a pity he had no stamina."


"The later Wittgenstein was a self-satisfied smug git who was trying to be just a little bit too clever ... He should have stayed being a gardener in a monastery and not gone back to philosophy.

I think Wittgenstein is over-rated. He just confuses people by being unclear and then justifies this by claiming to be anti-metaphysical. When people find it hard to understand him, they end up assuming it must be because they are stupid and he was incredibly clever. Maybe it is just because he is unclear, inconsistent and incapable of agreeing with himself."


"List or explain one accomplishment by him either from his early or later writings. What do they amount to in the history of anything except for uninteresting erroeneous dialogue and a few quotable (but still insignificant) quotes? Indeed I think I've just described the majority of 'philosophers'."


"There is no reason, in the world, for an undergrad to ever pick up a Wittgenstein book, much less write a paper about it. None. I actually have to turn away. I am sickened when I read it."


"Wittgenstein is the worthless PBR drinking hipster version of Gilbert Ryle."


"by the way wittgenstein was probably 'mentally retarded' as well"

Ludwig Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus II

"It was not an easy task for me to write anything on Wittgenstein. The problem is, after reading about a page and a half of any of his works my mind shuts down completely. I fall asleep or start daydreaming. It’s some kind of automatic defence mechanism. When we had the Wittgenstein picnic in Jesmond Dene a year and a half ago, I only managed to stay awake throughout by being seriously physically uncomfortable, sitting on the cold, hard ground. So in preparing for this talk, I have circumvented reading any Wittgenstein by making use of two books on Wittgenstein ... My problem with Wittgenstein is really very simple: he completely misses the point.
...
Wittgenstein thinks that religion and morality are beyond the limits of language, beyond what can be said. This is very easy to refute, although it cannot be said, only shown: [hold up William James]. The fact that William James has managed to write a book on religion that makes sense to a total and utter atheist like myself is enough to show that Wittgenstein is wrong.
There is nothing in the structure or nature of language that stops us from talking about religion or morality. The structure of language has nothing to do with the limits of our knowledge about religion or morality.
...
I have serious problems with Wittgenstein’s approach. Why does he pretend to just describe and do all his theory implicitly? Why does he refuse to set down his views in a structured format? Surely his approach leads to inconsistencies in his work and makes life more difficult for someone who tries to follow his reasoning?
...
Conclusions:
I don’t see how a study of the structure of language has any bearing on philosophy. If you’re after the conditions of being, study the conditions of being. Language is a product of being, not a condition.

Secondly, there’s nothing you can’t talk about, as long as you do it properly. It’s perfectly valid to discuss morality, aesthetics or even religion. Certainly the limits of language won’t prevent you from saying anything a human can know about any subject.

Thirdly: I’m happy that I have done this Investigation. Until today, I hated Wittgenstein more or less instinctively. At least now I have given a rational defence of my dislike.

Finally: I hope that this has shown all Wittgensteinians to be forever silent. Can I leave now?"

Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations

"Wittgenstein was cryptic in the extreme. This has been mistaken for wisdom."


"This book is deliberately obscure pretentious drivel. If anyone tells you how profound it is--run quickly in the opposite direction. It is simply behaviorism (Ryle's concept of mind is a much better book embodying similar ideas) with a pseudo-hip patina of bad coffee-house poetry pasted on.

Academic philosophy is only now beginning to recover from this wooly-headed bit of nonsense.

Buy it for the laughs you can get by contemplating how much academic ink was spilled over the latter half of the twentieth century trying to make sense out of this peurile idiocy.

Fear that they were somehow missing the 'awesomely profound truths' buried (who knows where) in this pablum, had otherwise intelligent philosophers actually afraid to talk about consciousness FOR ALMOST THIRTY YEARS out of fear that Dan Dennett or some other pseudo-intellectual-Wittgensteinian would start jabbering on about beetle boxes to them.

Along with BEING AND TIME, and the complete works J. Derrida, this book was the greatest intellectual fraud of the 20th century."


"Exceeding the gold standard he set in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein outreaches every expectation in Philosophical Investigations to produce what amounts to the second worst poem ever written. The first was the original manuscript of the same , which, I am told, contained two additional aphorisms.

If we were so fortunate that Wittgenstein was, in fact not real but a figment of Douglas Adams' imagination, he would have been the hero of the Vogon art scene.

This book is crap. It is NOT philosophy. It's what happens when a German engineer reads fifteen pages of Theatetus and suddenly thinks himself a philosopher."

Ludwig Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

"I find, the old Chinese Sage philosophy of the Tao much more understanding and much of which Wittgenstein probably already knew and read about before he even started this non-sense. Which to me, that I, believe makes a worth of understanding the self in it self. Read philosophy on the Tao before, you, read this!"


"The Tractatus is a mesmerizing pile of poo. I spent a semester trying to understand whatever it was that Wittgenstein seemed to have stumbled upon... it turns out that this is just nothing more than an engineer writing bad poetry. Crap. Absolute crap..

'Whereof that which we cannot speak we must pass over in silence.' What the devil is this? It's a coward's way out. Translation: 'I can't roll with the big dogs so I'm going to take my ball and go home.'"


"It was like reading bad poetry written by an engineer who cannot think outside the box. I did not really enjoy it.

But I do admit that I have not read too many philosophical essays yet, so this book might not have been ready for me yet (yeah, Wittisteini, how do you like the logical form of THAT sentence? =D )"


"Wittgenstein must be the most over rated philosopher who has ever lived. Because of the work (and marketing) of a few devoted students, the rest of us have been led to believe that he is one of the great ones. The truth is nothing of the sort. He couldn't write clearly ... Much of his work is unreadable ... If you really want to read some good philosophy, do not be unjustifiably taken in by the weird mystique of the Wittgenstein name. It is all P.R. work by some ivy league philosophers who do not even care anymore if philsophy has anything useful to say to people who live in the real world. As long as they can continue to collect their salaries and analyze their little language puzzles in the privacy of their faculty offices, they are happy-and irrelevant to the lives of anyone who actually works outside of a university. Save yourself the bother of trying to decipher this guy; It isn't worth your trouble."


"Just glad he didn't live long enough to write another."