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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

As someone reasonably familiar with Wittgenstein's work, I was surprised by how much of his time was spent going to the movies. And not to see masterpieces, but mostly to see formulaic American Westerns. He was plagued by philosophical thoughts constantly and so a movie "without any artistic or intellectual pretensions" served as a kind of mind refresher for him.

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There is a line in Wittgenstein’s Vienna (by Janik and Toulmin) that links W’s love of westerns up with his philosophical work (esp the Tractatus), roughly “W liked westerns because they showed ethical principles vs trying to demonstrate them with philosophical arguments.” I’m not an expert but I think the book is a great intellectual biography not just of W but of the time and place in general.

Interesting, I will check out that biography for sure.

I wouldn't have thought that either the Tractatus or westerns have much to do with ethics but philosophy can make some strange connections and that book does sound interesting.

Love that analysis. Reminds me of some experiences on drugs where, if you empty your mind tabula rasa, movies look like compressed guides to emotions and relating in society. Hard to see normally because of how much experience and context we bring in.

There are also different lenses you can watch through.

The typical one is immersion - keeping track of the characters, feeling the tension as it ratchets up and down.

The two others I like are background - keeping track of the scenery as if it's a character, reading lighting and detail as its moods.

And naive sequential - treating each shot as if its a direct reply to the previous one.

Interestinigly he had a similar taste in books and consumed pulp crime fiction like they had an expiration date. You'd think this would indicate he was a lighthearted person outside of his work, but most accounts seem to have him down as an extremely intense personality. I think Wittgenstein is genuinely impossible to pin down both in terms of his work, and his life.

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