维根斯坦(1889～1951年)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (Josef Johann)
奥裔英籍哲学家，20世纪哲学界的主要人物之一。为奥地利大钢铁制造商之子。在柏林和曼彻斯特学机械工程。罗素的着作使他更加对数学产生兴趣。後赴剑桥随罗素学习（1911～1913）。他曾创作出两个具有原创性及影响性的哲学思想体系－－即其逻辑理论与稍晚的语言哲学。第一次世界大战服役於奥地利。在战犯营中完成他的伟大着作《逻辑哲学论丛》，《论丛》的中心问题是：如何可能藉着发出一些字音而言说某件事情？而他所获得的答案是︰一个能说出某件事物的语句（即命题）必需是「现实的一个图式」。他对维也纳学圈和逻辑实证论深具影响。其後，放弃了大笔财富，另觅其他职业。由於发现自己能在哲学中进行有创造性的工作，於1929年回剑桥。由於他的演讲和学生所作笔记之广为流传，他逐渐对整个英语世界的哲学思想发挥有力的影响。死後出版的《哲学研究》（1953），书中的观点与《论丛》有很大不同，认为无穷无尽的各种语言用法背後，并未隐藏着统一的本质。维根斯坦第二个哲学体系中的显着特徵是他较注重於揭示概念如何与行为和反应相连结，怎样同人们生活当中的概念的表达相联系。
English version：
1889～1951年
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (Josef Johann)
Austrian-British philosopher, one of the most influential figures in 20th-century philosophy. The son of an immensely wealthy and cultivated Viennese industrialist, he studied mechanical engineering in Berlin and Manchester. The works of Bertrand Russell led to his increasing interest in mathematics, and he later studied under Russell at Cambridge (1912-13). He produced two original and influential systems of philosophical thought, his logical theories and later his philosophy of language. He served in the Austrian army in World War I, and completed his great Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in a prisoner-of-war camp. It dealt with the question of how language expresses meaning; his solution was that a sentence that says something (a proposition) must be “a picture of reality.” It exerted great influence on the Vienna Circle and the school of logical positivism. Thereafter, he gave away all of his fortune and worked in an odd variety of jobs, before returning to Cambridge as a fellow in 1929. Through his lectures and the wide circulation of notes taken by his students, he came to exert a powerful influence on English-language philosophy. Philosophical Investigations (1953) crowned this second period of activity, in which he strove to show how language is linked to actions and reactions, with the aim of demonstrating that its significance is due not to an intangible realm of mind but to the human forms of life in which it plays a role. Several other works were edited posthumously. See also analytic philosophy.