Superdeterminist
Enlightened
- Apr 5, 2020
- 1,877
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.
So much tragedy in this one family. The Wittgenstein family seems to make a strong case for the heritability of suicidality, since it can be no coincidence that three of the five brothers committed suicide, and while Ludwig never did, he was certainly the depressive type, and it showed in his writings:
"I ought to have...become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth."
Ludwig was said to have endured nine years of loneliness and suffering, during which he had continually thought of suicide (by his own account), and apparently talked incessantly about suicide, terrifying his sisters and brother Paul.
All info taken from Wikipedia.
Are there any famous figures who you think about, who either took their own lives, or whose lives were otherwise intertwined with suicide?
Three of his four older brothers died by separate acts of suicide:
The eldest brother, Hans, died in mysterious circumstances in May 1902, when he ran away to America and disappeared from a boat in Chesapeake Bay, most likely having committed suicide.
Two years later, aged 22 and studying chemistry at the Berlin Academy, the third eldest brother, Rudi, committed suicide in a Berlin bar. He had asked the pianist to play Thomas Koschat's "Verlassen, verlassen, verlassen bin ich" ("Forsaken, forsaken, forsaken am I"), before mixing himself a drink of milk and potassium cyanide. He had left several suicide notes, one to his parents that said he was grieving over the death of a friend, and another that referred to his "perverted disposition". It was reported at the time that he had sought advice from the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, an organization that was campaigning against Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which prohibited homosexual sex. His father forbade the family from ever mentioning his name again.
The second eldest brother, Kurt, an officer and company director, shot himself on 27 October 1918 just before the end of World War I, when the Austrian troops he was commanding refused to obey his orders and deserted en masse. It was said that he seemed to carry "the germ of disgust for life within himself".
The eldest brother, Hans, died in mysterious circumstances in May 1902, when he ran away to America and disappeared from a boat in Chesapeake Bay, most likely having committed suicide.
Two years later, aged 22 and studying chemistry at the Berlin Academy, the third eldest brother, Rudi, committed suicide in a Berlin bar. He had asked the pianist to play Thomas Koschat's "Verlassen, verlassen, verlassen bin ich" ("Forsaken, forsaken, forsaken am I"), before mixing himself a drink of milk and potassium cyanide. He had left several suicide notes, one to his parents that said he was grieving over the death of a friend, and another that referred to his "perverted disposition". It was reported at the time that he had sought advice from the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, an organization that was campaigning against Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which prohibited homosexual sex. His father forbade the family from ever mentioning his name again.
The second eldest brother, Kurt, an officer and company director, shot himself on 27 October 1918 just before the end of World War I, when the Austrian troops he was commanding refused to obey his orders and deserted en masse. It was said that he seemed to carry "the germ of disgust for life within himself".
So much tragedy in this one family. The Wittgenstein family seems to make a strong case for the heritability of suicidality, since it can be no coincidence that three of the five brothers committed suicide, and while Ludwig never did, he was certainly the depressive type, and it showed in his writings:
"I ought to have...become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth."
Ludwig was said to have endured nine years of loneliness and suffering, during which he had continually thought of suicide (by his own account), and apparently talked incessantly about suicide, terrifying his sisters and brother Paul.
All info taken from Wikipedia.
Are there any famous figures who you think about, who either took their own lives, or whose lives were otherwise intertwined with suicide?
