Knowing Where to Turn: Analogy, Method and Literary Form in Plato and Wittgenstein

Abstract

Notoriously, Wittgenstein read very little philosophy.1 ‘He could only read what he could wholeheartedly assimilate,’ recalled von Wright, ‘[…] as a young man he read Schopenhauer. From Spinoza, Hume and Kant he said he could get only occasional glimpses of understanding. I do not think he could have enjoyed Aristotle or Leibniz, two great logicians before him. But it is significant that he did read and enjoy Plato. He must have recognized congenial features, both in Plato’s literary and philosophical method and the temperament behind the thoughts’ [MM:19].