Wittgenstein

American  

[vit-guhn-shtahyn, -stahyn] / ˈvɪt gənˌʃtaɪn, -ˌstaɪn /

noun

1. Ludwig (Josef Johann) 1889–1951, Austrian philosopher.

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Wittgenstein British  

/ -ˌstaɪn, ˈvɪtɡənˌʃtaɪn /

noun

1. Ludwig Josef Johann (ˈluːtvɪç ˈjoːzɛf joˈhan). 1889–1951, British philosopher, born in Austria. After studying with Bertrand Russell, he wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), which explores the relationship of language to the world. He was a major influence on logical positivism but later repudiated this, and in Philosophical Investigations (1953) he argues that philosophical problems arise from insufficient attention to the variety of natural language use

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Other Word Forms

• Wittgensteinian
  adjective

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Wittgenstein

Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once warned that philosophical problems arise when “language goes on holiday.”

From Science Daily ● Jun. 8, 2026

“If a lion could speak,” Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote, “we could not understand him,” because his thoughts and experiences of being a lion in the world would simply be too alien to us.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 2026

The world's only professional one-handed concert pianist, Nicholas McCarthy, makes his Proms debut, playing a concerto originally written for Paul Wittgenstein, after he lost his right arm during World War One.

From BBC ● Apr. 23, 2025

The subjects being communicated by animals may be unlike anything humans might expect or comprehend, which the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once summed up by arguing, “If a lion could speak, we would not understand him.”

From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2024

No one should be surprised if histories and philosophies of science which start from Wittgenstein seem to miss the very thing that science is all about.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton