Oooh! I get to coin the new epithet for this next bête noire: “Big Pot”

The difficulty of understanding Wittgenstein was perhaps captured best by Wittgenstein himself in a remark recalled by his sister Hermine. Hermine describes Ludwig’s reaction when she expressed her inability to comprehend why he, with his incomparable philosophical mind, would rather work as a gardener’s assistant or an elementary school teacher than as a professor of philosophy: “Ludwig replied with an analogy that reduced me to silence. He said, ‘You remind me of somebody who is looking out through a closed window and cannot explain to himself the strange movements of a passer-by. He cannot tell what sort of storm is raging out there or that this person might only be managing with difficulty to stay on his feet.’ Then I understood the state of mind he was in.

Wittgenstein once wrote that, to a continuation of his philosophical work by others, he would prefer a change in the way people live, a change that would render superfluous all the issues and questions of his philosophizing.

Necessity… the mother of all invention (or something).

(For amusement, cf. current celebrity begging-bowl philosophy.)

The Rains of Castamere…