- Considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein played a central, if controversial, role in mid-20th-century analytic philosophy. He continues to influence, and incur debate in, current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture, and even political thought. Furthermore, a central factor in investigating Wittgenstein’s works is the multifarious nature of the project of interpreting them; this leads to untold difficulties in the ascertainment of his philosophical substance and method.
- In the next place, I attentively examined what I was, and as I observed that I could suppose that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place in which I might be; but that I could not therefore suppose that I was not; and that, on the contrary, from the very circumstance that I thought to doubt of the truth of other things, it most clearly and certainly followed that I was; while, on the other hand, if I had only ceased to think, although all the other objects which I had ever imagined had been in reality existent, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed; I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that “I,” that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is.
stanford encyclopedia of philosophy of