ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the imaginative work of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the roots of his monumental Tractatus. The Wittgensteins were early in the nineteenth-century process of assimilation even so, in any plural society, there may be many cases of uncertainty of identity. Wittgenstein would be affected in some way by anti-Semitism may seem to be self-evident. The cultural life of Vienna owed much to persons of Jewish descent. In some cases, such as those of Otto Weininger and Karl Kraus both of whom Wittgenstein admired, it is possible to discern the influence of a specifically Jewish environment and certainly they were conscious of it. Despite the prevalence of anti-Semitism there was evidence of Jewish assimilation resulting from the progressive economic integration of Jews into the life of the great melting pots of the urban centres like Vienna and Berlin.
