Wittgenstein's Vienna

This is a remarkable book about a man (perhaps the most important and original philosopher of our age), a society (the corrupt Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of dissolution), and a city (Vienna, with its fin-de si_cle gaiety and corrosive melancholy). The central figure in this study of a crumbl [...]
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This is a remarkable book about a man (perhaps the most important and original philosopher of our age), a society (the corrupt Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of dissolution), and a city (Vienna, with its fin-de si_cle gaiety and corrosive melancholy). The central figure in this study of a crumbling society that gave birth to the modern world is Wittgenstein, the brilliant and gifted young thinker. With others, including Freud, Viktor Adler, and Arnold Schoenberg, he forged his ideas in a classical revolt against the stuffy, doomed, and moralistic lives of the old regime. As a portrait of Wittgenstein, the book is superbly realized; it is even better as a portrait of the age, with dazzling and unusual parallels to our own confused society. OAllan Janik and Stephen Toulmin have acted on a striking premise: an understanding of prewar Vienna, WittgensteinOs 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.O_New York Times Book Review.