tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26706564.post4955192165275422208..comments2024-03-25T07:51:47.758-04:00Comments on Thoughts On Economics: Send A LetterRobert Vienneauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14748118392842775431noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26706564.post-56072490794200613982008-02-11T16:03:00.000-05:002008-02-11T16:03:00.000-05:00Thanks for the link!I dug out the Monk biography o...Thanks for the link!<BR/><BR/>I dug out the Monk biography of Wittgenstein. Upon receiving this letter Wittgenstein travelled to Cambridge (from Dublin) to meet with Sraffa. On March 18th he noted in his diary:<BR/><BR/>"Sraffa advised me yesterday that I should, for the time being, not go to Vienna under any circumstances, for I could not now help my people and in all probability would not be allowed to leave Austria. I am not <I>fully</I> clear what I should do, but, for the time being, I think Sraffa is right."<BR/><BR/>Wittgenstein then wrote to Keynes, asking for help in obtaining a Cambridge job and British citizenship. Keynes apparently assisted: Wittgenstein quickly received a lectureship, and obtained a British passport in June 1939. In July he travelled to Berlin and Vienna, where he and his sister (eventually) negotiated his family's exemption from the Nuremberg laws - at the cost of much of the family wealth.<BR/><BR/>On the intellectual side of things: I'd read the Norman Malcolm anecdote... It's a compelling 'primal scene' for the creation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy - but clearly doesn't convey the intellectual relationship between the two men. According to Monk, "Wittgenstein once remarked to Rush Rhees that the most important thing he gained from talking to Sraffa was an 'anthropological' way of looking at philosophical problems." <BR/><BR/>That's pretty elliptical; but I wonder whether Sraffa's engagement with Marx was a factor here. I'm sure it's been said before - but there's no better summary of the later Wittgenstein's philosophical perspective than the following: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." The movement from the early to the late Wittgenstein could be seen as a movement from the former perspective to the latter. Perhaps that's one area in which the influence of Sraffa was important.<BR/><BR/>But as you say, all suggestions of this kind are highly speculative.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26706564.post-47793830732981199462008-02-10T12:45:00.000-05:002008-02-10T12:45:00.000-05:00Thanks for the compliment.This is apparently the o...Thanks for the compliment.<BR/><BR/>This is apparently the only letter from Sraffa to Wittgenstein that survives. I downloaded it from Google books. I did not read the remainder of the Wittgenstein correspondence in that book.<BR/><BR/>I've previously <A HREF="http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/2007/06/ludwig-changes-his-mind.html" REL="nofollow">echoed</A> Norman Malcolm's account of how Sraffa came to convince Wittgenstein to change his mind.<BR/><BR/>I've read some papers attempting to relate Sraffa's economics to Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Such work strikes me as speculative.<BR/><BR/>I've added your blog to my blogroll.Robert Vienneauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14748118392842775431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26706564.post-2097811565597178702008-02-08T17:02:00.000-05:002008-02-08T17:02:00.000-05:00Thanks for posting this - it's been on my mind lat...Thanks for posting this - it's been on my mind lately, and I can't find my edition of Wittgenstein's letters. If I remember right, this is the only correspondence between Wittgenstein and Sraffa that survives. (?) I find their friendship fascinating. Sraffian that you are, you of course know that Wittgenstein credited Sraffa as the stimulus behind the most significant ideas in the 'Investigations'. That's a pretty extraordinary acknowledgement - given that the 'Investigations' is one of the greatest works of philosophy of the twentieth century, and that Wittgenstein was always very miserly with his praise. Plus W was a notoriously hard man to get along with - but he and Sraffa had an intense intellectual friendship lasting years. It's all very interesting - and, unfortunately, lost to posterity. But you know all this. <BR/><BR/>Anyway, if I remember right, Ray Monk, in his biography of Wittgenstein, says of the letter's last sentence something along the lines of: this forces one to wonder what heights of lucidity Sraffa reached in the rest of his correspondence.<BR/><BR/>Love the blog.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com