Ludwig Wittgenstein
 

Has anyone read him?

I've read the Tractatus and now The Blue Book. I'm enjoying them so far, but I'm having a hard time parsing out what he's up to. Seems to have a shit-ton in common with the Structuralist/Poststructuralist/Deconstruction schools.

How is he different?
How did he change the way you see things?
Is this topic boring and destined to sink fast?
Thoughts?

I have.

Slab!

Yes and no. As to why, you not only need a very fine distinction of early and latter Wittgenstein, which are worlds apart, but also a fine investigation of either periods. For the most part, though, early Wittgenstein's "picture" theory was adopted by analytic philosophers (like the logical positivists) and latter Wittgenstein's "family resemblance" theory appealed more to continental philosophers (such as Lyotard and others). Really, though, Witty's influence is subtle yet pervasive. Expect him anything the limits of language is considered. Any time a philosophy twat tells you what you can or cannot say, there haunts Ludwig.

Tractatus I only know well enough to say that it's not as dissimilar to his Philosophical Investigations as is often held. I used to think it was the last of the great absurd systems; now I'm not sure if the ludic thing wasn't there already.

Philosophical Investigations is one of those books that changed a lot of the way people think. Though it's important to remember that de Saussure, Freud, Nietzsche [etc] all played a huge part in the 'linguistic turn', as it were, and there are other people who sandwich between Wittgensteinian thought and postmodern/ post-structuralist thought - your Lacans and so on, but (for me) someone like Feyerabend is pretty important as well (if only for re-integrating ludic processes into a more 'properly' analytical-scientific schema).

Yeah. He's great, bless him.

lol