RUSSELL'S OBITUARY OF WITTGENTSTEIN

RUSSELL, BERTRAND.

Obituary: Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Edinburgh, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951. 8vo. In the original printed wrappers. In "Mind. A Quarterly Journal", Vol. LX, No. 239, July, 1951. With some nicks to margins of wrappers, internally very fine and clean. Pp. 297-8. [Entire issue: (2), 297-440, (2) pp.].

First printing of Russell's obituary of Wittgentstein. Russell described him as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating".

The two meet in 1910 at the University of Cambridge where Russell was approached by the Austrian engineering student Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became his PhD student. Russell viewed Wittgenstein as a genius and a successor who would continue his work on logic. He spent hours dealing with Wittgenstein's various phobias and his frequent bouts of despair. This was often a drain on Russell's energy, but Russell continued to be fascinated by him and encouraged his academic development, including the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1922:
From the present obituary: "I naturally lost sight of him during the 1914-1918 war, but I got a letter from him soon after the armistice, written from Monte Casino. He told me that he had been taken prisoner, but fortunately with his manuscript, which was the 'Tractatus'. I pulled strings to get him released by the Italian Government and we met at the Hague, where we discussed 'Tractatus' line by line.

Order-nr.: 47441