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Editorial

How Did He Do That?

by Rick Lewis

Concentrating on philosophy can be quite tough. When I am reading or writing philosophy I like to retreat to some secluded café and I adopt a furrowed brow so that everyone will know how hard I am working. So the question in my mind is how on earth Ludwig Wittgenstein managed to write one of the major classics of 20th century philosophy while serving as a forward artillery observer for the Austrian Army in World War One. Really it isn’t remotely surprising that he was a little ‘unusual’, a little intense, in later life. He spent nights sitting in a dugout in no man’s land, with the Russian Army actively trying to kill him, and in between bouts of prayer (entirely understandable) he jotted down propositions about the connections between language, thought and reality.

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