3/15/1948 Ludwig Wittgenstein praises you-know-what

March 15, 1948.  Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.  One doesn't necessarily think of such folks as reading hard-boiled detective fiction, but one might be wrong.

On this date he wrote a letter in which he compared philosophy journals to crime publications: "Your mags are wonderful.  How people can read Mind if they could read Street & Smith ['s Detective Story Magazine] beats me.  If philosophy has anything to do with wisdom there’s certainly not a grain of that in Mind, and quite often a grain in the detective stories.”

A few years earlier he had jokingly complained about the end of the lend-lease agreement between the United States and his adopted home of Great Britain: "if the U.S.A. won’t give us detective mags we can’t give them philosophy ...”


You can read more about this at Mystery*FIle's article.