- Timeline
- Dob 26 April 1889, 8:30 pm
- May 1902, Hans suicide
- May 1903, Rudi suicide
- Sep 1903, starts at Realschule, Linz
- 3 Oct 1903, Otto Weininger suicide
- 23 Oct 1906, starts at Technische Hochschule, Berlin
- Spring 1908, starts at Manchester: propeller research --> mathematics --> what is mathematics? --> Russell --> Principles of Mathematics --> Russell's paradox --> what is logic?
- Autumn 1908, earns research studentship there for propeller work
- Summer 1911, visits Gottlob Frege --> reduce truths of maths to truths of logic? --> laws of logic = laws of thoughts
- 18 Oct 1911, turns up at Bertrand Russell's rooms
- Nov 1911, Russell reads something W writes, and decides he is a genius
- 1912, joins Moral Sciences Club
- 17 May 1912, Lytton Strachey writes about him attending an Apostles meeting
- Summer 1912, meets David Hume Pinsent at Russell squash
- May 1912, Pinsent writes that W has just started to study philosophy
- Sept 1912, travels to Iceland with Pinsent, financed by Karl
- 29 Nov 1912, first paper to MSC
- 20 Jan 1913, Karl Wittgenstein dies
- 1913, goes to Skjolden, Norway, writes Logik
- 8 Oct 1913, W and Pinsent last see each other at Birmingham train station
- May 1914, angry letter to Moore about Logik not being appropriate for BA
- August 1914, Pepi Strigl death
- 3 Nov 1914, Georg Trakl death
- 1916, Russell writes that LW's criticism meant he could never do good work again
- March 1916, posted to a fighting unit on the Russian front
- 14 Sept 1916: Last letter from Pinsent to W
- Jan 1917, posted again to the Russian front as a member of a howitzer regiment
- May 1918, Pinsent death, W distraught
- June 1918, promoted to lieutenant and sent to northern Italy
- Oct 1918, Kurt suicide, W returned to Italian front, captured by the Italians
- Sept 1919, enrolls in teacher training college, Kundmanngasse, Vienna
- May 1920, tells friend he is suicidal and "I have sunk to the lowest point."
- 1920, first teaching job, in Trattenbach
- Oct 1921, tells Russell he is surrounded by idiousness and baseness
- 1921, Tractatus published in German. Logic does not describe states of affairs. Logic not a description of the world, but the boundary of the world. Limits of language = limits of reality. How do we describe limits without breaching them?
- Sept 1922, moves to a school in Hassbach
- Nov 1922, moves to a school in Puchberg am Schneeberg
- Sep 1924, moves to a school in Otterthal
- April 1926, Haidbauer incident
- 17 May 1926, W is summoned to court in Gloggnitz, judge orders psychiatric report
- August 1926, W writes to Ludwig Hänsel that case is ongoing
- 1936-1927, returns to Austria to apologize to the pupils he hurt
- 25 Oct 1946, waves a poker at Karl Popper
- 1955: PI published. Descartes wrong about inner to outer. W turns that around. Outer to inner. You know the content of your thoughts because you take part in a linguistic community. Language not a clothing for thought, but the fabric of it.
Legacy. W charismatic. People attracted to him, not ideas. Strongly disliked worship of science, which resonates with people in different disciplines.