Walther Ziegler 
Wittgenstein in 60 Minutes 

Ludwig Wittgenstein is the great philosopher of language. With his famous ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ he brought about an epoch-making shift in philosophy: the ‘Linguistic Turn’ from consciousness and Being toward speech. For our speech alone (so runs his key idea) determines how we see the world and ourselves. No one, philosopher or not, is able to form even a single thought without using words and phrases to do it. We learn language as small children and from then on it forms our whole worldview. Therefore, says Wittgenstein, philosophy’s first and most important task is to understand language to be the most basic tool of all its knowledge. In the ‘Tractatus’ he gives a precise analysis of what we can – and cannot – say about the world by using words and language. The result he arrives at is radical: we may not say anything that cannot be precisely logically expressed and tested by experiment. And ‘what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence’. But Wittgenstein also makes a second great discovery: in his later work he shows that it is only ‘language games’ – i.e. everyday conversations between various communities of speakers – that give words their meanings and influence our whole way of seeing the world. Is our reality so completely formed and pervaded by ‘language games’ as Wittgenstein claims? And if so, of what use to is this great discovery today?
The book ‘Wittgenstein in 60 Minutes’ explains both Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus’ and his fascinating theory of language-games, using around 100 key quotations from both works. It appears as part of the popular series ‘Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes’.

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Dr. Walther Ziegler is academically trained in the fields of philosophy, history and political science. As a foreign correspondent, reporter and newsroom coordinator for the German TV Station Pro Sieben he has produced films on every continent. His news reports have won several prizes and awards. He has also authored numerous books in the field of philosophy. His many years of experience as a journalist mean that he is able to present the complex ideas of the great philosophers in a way that is both engaging and very clear. Since 2007 he has also been active as a teacher and trainer of young TV journalists in Munich, holding the post of Academic Director at the Media Academy, an institute of higher education that offers film and TV courses at its base directly on the site of the major European film production company Bavaria Film.