[lit-ideas] Re: Ludwig and Bertie
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:29:43 EDT
Interesting play, Ritchie; and I enjoyed Geary's rewrite.
I especially enjoyed the Borgesian anachronism: the play is supposed to take
place (or 'take time' as Geary would correct me) in 1911; yet the incident, as
per Edmonds & Eidinow's book -- of 2004 -- ocurred (took time) in 1946.
Cheers,
JL
------
In a message dated 4/29/2004 10:11:57 PM Eastern Standard Time,
ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes re: Justin Greene's play,
Dahlia finding herself once again short of funds for her magazine,
"Milady's Untenaable Propositions," asks Bertie to break into Ludwig
Wittgenstein's bedroom in dead of night and steal his priceless, gold-plated
poker, a souvenir of the famous encounter with Professor Popper.
Wittgenstein's Poker : The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great
Philosophers
by David Edmonds (Author), John Eidinow (Author)
In October 1946, philosopher Karl Popper arrived at Cambridge to lecture at a
seminar hosted by his legendary colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein. It did not go
well: the men began arguing, and eventually, Wittgenstein began waving a fire
poker toward Popper. It lasted scarcely 10 minutes, yet the debate has turned
into perhaps modern philosophy's most contentious encounter, largely because
none of the eyewitnesses could agree on what happened. Did Wittgenstein
physically threaten Popper with the poker? Did Popper lie about it afterward?
BBC
journalists Edmonds and Eidinow use the controversy as a springboard to probe
the
whys and whats of these two great thinkers, weaving biography, journalism and
philosophy to produce one of the year's most entertaining and intellectually
rich books. The authors show that the debate was a clash at several levels.
First, of personalities: each was "bullying, aggressive, intolerant and
self-absorbed"; in other words, accustomed to winning and unlikely to back
down.
Second, of class: Wittgenstein was an Austrian aristocrat, Popper was
bourgeoisie
(each fled Vienna to escape Hitler). And third, of ideas: Wittgenstein believed
that philosophy boiled down to nothing more than a series of linguistic
puzzles, while Popper thought philosophy involved real problems that
immediately
affected the world at large. Clearly, the stakes were high for both men in that
lecture hall especially because their common mentor, the aging icon Bertrand
Russell, was also in attendance. The debate thus took on the character of a
succession for the throne. Tightly constructed and extraordinarily well
written,
this is a marvelous blend of lay and academic scholarship. It has every chance
of becoming a classic of its kind. (Nov.)Forecast: Smart, general readers
will gobble up this latest addition to narrative nonfiction. It will surely
find
a place for itself among The Professor and the Madman and An Eternal Golden
Braid.
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