Wittgenstein’s Poker

It only took me 9 years to get to it, and then only by the accident of running across it in the AUC bookstore, but I’m glad I finally read it. Wittgenstein’s Poker is a fine read, and quite balanced (not a bizarre piece of propaganda like The Courtier and the Heretic).

Not that it makes either Popper or Wittgenstein more likable as people. Quite the contrary. But it does make them both more interesting as thinker.

But what a pair of self-obsessed, over-aggressive people. The only thing funnier is reading the Nietzsche-Strindberg correspondence from the period when they were both starting to lose it.

CLICK HERE.

A sample from Nietzsche’s side of the correspondence:

“Turin, December 31, 1888
To August Strindberg in Holte

Dear Sir,

You shall soon hear my response to your novella—it will sound like a rifle shot. I have convoked a conference of princes in Rome, I intend to have the young Kaiser face a firing squad.

Auf Wiedersehen! For we shall meet again. Une seule condition: Divorçons …

Nietzsche Caesar”