Poker

I finished Wittgenstein’s Poker  and I have more of an emotional feeling than an intellectual one.  I am sad.  You have two geniuses (in a group of other geniuses), Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein.  Both men are tortured by their memories, scarred by their families and the Nazi takeover of their homes, and a bit crazy.  Both come from the same homeland, displaced and lonely.  But he difference between them, aside from their philosophical views, is that Popper spent his entire life saying “look at me”., I am smart, funny and all important” , while Wittgenstein was more, “I do not need your approval, for I know I am smarter than all of you”.  Popper wanted more than anything to be like Wittgenstein, but could not.  That is the crux of the book.

At the all important H3 meeting at Cambridge, whatever the real facts, as no one knows, Popper was speaking; Wittgenstein got angry, as he was known to do, brandished a hot poker and then walked out.  Popper selectively remembers the incident as he being so clever that Wittgenstein had met his match, abdicated his thrown by walking out, thereby winning some epic battle.  Wittgenstein barely remembered Popper at all.  Others who were there seemed to believe that Popper embellished the facts to look like some hero who had won some huge philosophical debate.  To me, Popper is a sad character.  He should have been comfortable in his own skin and not cared a lick about Wittgenstein.

Further, today, Popper is most only remembered in New Zealand where he taught.  Wittgenstein, on the other hand, is remembered all over.  This knowledge would probably kill Popper all over again and Wittgenstein would still call virtually all of us idiots.

Wittgenstein’s Poker was well written, informative and really drew the reader in on the small issue of brandishing a hot poker.  But the book, to me was more about how we are all affected by our family and friends and that we should be comfortable in our own skins and not look to the approval of others for our own happiness.