The richest heir in Vienna gave everything away and kept only the hardest questions ever asked about language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born into one of the wealthiest families in Europe and died telling his friends he had lived wonderfully, though almost nothing in between looks like happiness.

This episode follows the whole arc: the palace in Vienna and the family tragedies, the flight from engineering into logic, the masterpiece written in the trenches of the First World War, and the lost decade he spent teaching village children after declaring philosophy finished.

Then the return, the quiet unraveling of his own system, the language games and the forms of life, the beetle in the box, the duck and the rabbit, and the riverbed of certainty he was still mapping two days before the end.

Along the way come Russell and Frege, the Vienna Circle's great misreading, Turing arguing about falling bridges, a disputed fireplace poker, and the deathbed sentence that frames it all. Serious philosophy, told slowly and clearly, for listeners who want real ideas as they drift off.

Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.

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(0:00:00) A Wonderful Life

(0:16:00) The Paradox That Broke Logic

(0:23:00) The Book in the Rucksack

(0:33:00) A Picture of the World

(0:46:00) What Cannot Be Said

(0:57:00) The End of Philosophy

(1:03:00) The Lost Decade

(1:12:00) The Great Misreading

(1:19:00) The Return

(1:32:00) Philosophy as Therapy

(1:41:00) Language Games

(1:55:00) Following the Rule

(2:05:00) The Beetle in the Box

(2:18:00) The Duck and the Rabbit

(2:25:00) The Inner and the Outer

(2:35:00) The Ceremonial Animal

(2:42:00) Inventing Mathematics

(2:52:00) The Riverbed

(3:05:00) The Walls of the Cage

(3:14:00) The Poker and the Confession

(3:22:00) The Album

(3:30:00) Light in the Darkness

Sleepy Philosophy Radio makes longform, carefully researched philosophy written as a serious essay and paced for rest.

All research and writing is done personally. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.