Daisy’s Reviews > Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius > Status Update

A morphology of magic rituals would,then,preserve what was deep about them, without either ridiculing or defending them. It would, in this way,have ‘the character of magic’. Similarly,Wittgenstein hoped,his new method of philosophy would preserve what was to be respected in the old metaphysical theories, and would itself have the character of metaphysics, without attempting the conjuring tricks of the Tractatus.

There is nothing more pleasant to me than when someone takes my thoughts out of my mouth, and then, so to speak, spreads them out in the open.

'I don't like taking walks through the fields of science alone', he added.

Brouwer rejected the idea that mathematics either could or needed to be grounded in logic. He further rejected the notion that consistency proofs were essential in mathematics. He also rejected the ‘objectivity’ of mathematics in the sense that it is usually understood – i.e. for Brouwer, there is no mind-independent mathematical reality about which mathematicians make discoveries.

Even in music, the art for which Wittgenstein had the greatest feeling,he showed above all a great understanding, rather than manifesting ‘wild life striving to erupt into the open’.When he played music with others, as he did frequently during this time in Vienna, his interest was in getting it right,in using his acutely sensitive ear to impose upon his fellow musicians an extraordinary exactitude of expression.