Ray monk wittgenstein6/28/2023 ![]() Best known, perhaps, is the one taken in Swansea in 1947, which shows Wittgenstein, then fifty-eight years old, standing in front of a graffiti-laden wall, his lined face gazing into the camera with precisely the combination of tenderness and ferocity McGinn describes. Because so many books on Wittgenstein have been published since his death in 1951, most of these pictures have been reproduced many times and have thus become very familiar. ![]() It is possible to be fairly sure which pictures McGinn has in mind here, since there are relatively few surviving photographs of the great philosopher and, of those, only a handful show him looking straight into the camera. You feel the excitement and peril of an encounter with the man. If you stare hard at the face, it seems to shift aspect from one of these poles to the other…. The look is simultaneously delicate and military, tender and ferocious. They are imploring eyes yet with an intense rage flaring just behind the iris, sending off an unnerving blend of supplication and admonition…. ![]() “Perhaps the best place to begin trying to understand Wittgenstein’s character,” the British philosopher Colin McGinn once remarked, “is with the photographs that exist of his face.” Looking into Wittgenstein’s eyes, McGinn went on, it is hard to meet his gaze for very long: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Swansea, Wales, September 1947 Ben Richards/Wittgenstein Archive, Cambridge ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |