How Wittgenstein Got A Handle On Things
Christopher Benfey writes: ‘What was it about handles—door-handles, axe-handles, the handles of pitchers and vases—that transfixed thinkers in Vienna and Berlin during the early decades of the twentieth century, echoing earlier considerations of handles in America and ancient Greece? Ludwig Wittgenstein, as everyone knows, abandoned philosophy after publishing his celebrated “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” in 1921.’ And they he started designing door handles.’
