One of the books i'm reading right now is Ethics Without Philosophy--Wittgenstein and the Moral Life by James C. Edwards.
If you've never read any Wittgenstein, a great place to start is Ray Monks wonderful biography The Duty of Genius.
Edwards quotes a passage from a letter Bertrand Russell wrote to Lady Ottoline Morrell describing a meeting that he had with Wittgenstein in December of 1919 in The Hague.
I had felt in his book a flavour of mysticism, but was astonished when I found that he has become a complete mystic. he reads people like Kierkegaard and Angelus Silesius, and he seriously contemplates becoming a monk. It all started from William Jame's Varieties of Religious Experience, and grew (not unnaturally) during the winter he spent alone in Norway before the war, when he was nearly mad. Then during the war a curious thing happened. He went on duty to the town of Tarnov in Galicia, and happended to come upon a bookshop, which, however, seemed to contain just one book: Tolstoy on the Gospels. He bought it merely because there was no other. He read it and re-read it, and thenceforth had it always with him, under fire and at all times. But on the whole he likes Tolstoy less than Dostoewki (especially Karamazov). He has penetrated deep into mystical ways of thought and feeling, but I think (though he wouldn't agree) that what he likes best in mysticism is its power to make him stop thinking. I don't much think he will really become a monk--it is an idea, not an intention. His intention is to be a teacher....
For context (if I dare to take a shot at is) Russell's most important work was in logic and his efforts working through the idea that mathematics was reducible to logic is probably one of his most lasting contributions. He also had a passionate (fanatical?) commitment to atheism, so finding his protege so immersed in mysticism was probably disheartening to him.
Two things, one important, one funny...struck me reading over this.
First, the funny one. Every time I read this passage--as its cited by a number of writers for different reasons--I come to this vision of a young Wittgenstein in his soldiers uniform strolling about Tarnov, and coming to a bookshop. He enters only to find empty book shelves, with only one book (a spotlight shines down on it?) sitting waiting for him to buy. The "it was the only book" certainly means the only book of interest to him. But nonetheless I just always think of it that way.
Second, and this is something that just struck me today. Its the distinction Russell makes between an idea that Wittgenstein has and an intention. He had the idea of becoming a monk. Many might hear him speak and say "he wants to become a monk", or, "he intends to become a monk." Deciphering between the two is vital to appropriately understanding what people mean and who they are.
In my own life I've learned that some of my "ideas" that don't come to fruition did so not from a lacking of something. But because I couldn't divide the idea from the intention. Our intentions drive us to come up with all sorts of ideas that could possibly help us reach this intention of ours. But many times ideas that don't come to fruition do so because they don't "gell" so to speak. Distinguishing ones ideas from ones intentions is something that can help clarify what/why we do (or don't do) things we think of doing.
I think a lot of frustrations and disappointments about ourselves and others are built on the failure to decipher the intentions our of all the different ideas on the table.
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