Wittgenstein’s Vienna

Wittgenstein’s Vienna – Allan Janik, Stephen Toulmin

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy presided over the birth of the modem era in the midst of a crumbling empire. The man and his ideas are the comerstone of this fascinating history of one of our century’s most fertile cultures. “Our subject is a fourfold one — a book and its meaning; a man and his ideas; a culture and its preoccupations; a society and its problems” write the authors in their introduction. And indeed the influence of turn-of-the-century Vienna is still being felt today in Wittgenstein’s work, as well as in the thought of Sigmund Freud, the music of Arnold Schonberg, and the art of Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka. These personalities make up the milieu that was Wittgenstein’s Vienna, and all of them come to life in this superbly realized account of Vienna’s provocative life, times, and culture.

“A brilliantly conceived project admirably brought off…. If philosophy is not to isolate itself entirely—and all the indications, I am glad to say, suggest the contrary—then its intelligibility to the rest of the world, and incidentally to itself, can only be enhanced by this work and by the example it sets!’
– Peter Caws

“Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin have acted on a striking premise: an understanding of prewar Vienna, Wittgenstein’s native city, will make it easier to comprehend both his work and our own problems….This is an independent work containing much that is challenging, new and useful:’
– The New York Times Book Review