Abstract

Some scholars suggest a puzzle presents itself in Ludwig Wittgenstein's final words in the mismatch between what Norman Malcolm describes as a ‘fiercely unhappy’ life and Wittgenstein's expression of that life as ‘wonderful’. Ronald L. Hall attempts to overcome the apparent puzzle by retranslating Wittgenstein's final words into an expression of an awakening to the wonder inherent in reality. Beth Savickey argues that Hall's approach is a philosophical abstraction that diminishes the significance of friendship in Wittgenstein's life and that these friendships are what made Wittgenstein's life ‘wonderful’. I argue that Hall's and Savickey's accounts of wonder and friendship go wrong as attempts to explain away the apparent puzzle of Wittgenstein's final words. Drawing on remarks from Raimond Gaita, I argue that both aspects can be incorporated into a dissolution of the apparent puzzle if Wittgenstein's final words are heard in the register of an expression of gratitude from a perspective of his life as a whole sub specie aeterni.