Tucked behind the Huntingdon Road on the way out of Cambridge, near Storey’s Way, lies a small cemetery: Ascension Parish Graveyard. 83 of the people buried there are mentioned in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Among them are quite a few philosophers, including the author of Principia Ethica G.E. Moore, the brilliant mathematician and philosopher Frank Ramsey who died aged only 26, and the eccentric philosophical couple Elisabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach. But by far the most famous of this graveyard’s inhabitants is the Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century. Many say the most important.
Listen to Barry C. Smith on Wittgenstein on Philosophy Bites.
Wittgenstein’s grave is not easy to find. It is a flat stone bearing the words Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951 in a sans serif modern font. It has the same stark simplicity as the Modernist house he designed for his sister in Vienna in the 1920s. The grave was recently restored: there is an interesting article with many photographs and details about the grave on the British Wittgenstein Society website.
Ray Monk, the interviewee for this episode of Philosophy Sites, is the author of a justly celebrated biography, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius
Listen to Ray Monk discussing philosophy and biography on Philosophy Bites.
Comments