Spare a thought this Labor Day for two 20th century philosophers who believed in working with their hands: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Simone Weil
In 1943, two of the century’s most original thinkers— Ludwig Wittgenstein and Simone Weil —found themselves in bomb-battered London, looking for medical work to help the war effort. Though they never met, they were remarkably similar. Both were foreigners by birth, and both struck others as foreigners by their behavior.
The metaphors for building in Wittgenstein’s work aren’t accidental. He brought a hammer to philosophy, not just to destroy assumptions but also to build an understanding of how we function in the world. That world was one that people made and came to understand through their work. And for Wittgenstein, work wasn’t only sitting in a cabin pondering big questions but also, as he did himself, collaborating with the laborers who constructed that cabin.
Wittgenstein called these exercises “games,” but they are more meaningful than playful. They reveal that words make sense only when we discover the ends they serve. At that moment, Wittgenstein assures us, our “philosophic puzzlement” evaporates.
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