Waismann and Waismann’s Wittgenstein

Friedrich Waismann’s views sometimes hide Wittgenstein’s ideas and methods and sometimes they appear mixed with them. In light of the recent literature and guided by a contrasting overview of Waismann’s and Wittgenstein’s published and unpublished works, I argue that underlying Waismann’s variations on themes by Wittgenstein was the logical empiricist aspiration to unify various kinds of knowledge and explain their relative position within the web of science. Waismann’s unique variation of logical empiricism is meant to accommodate Wittgenstein’s critique of philosophy in an alternative account of the relative position of logic, mathematics, natural science, ethics, and religion. I intend to delineate some aspects of this ambitious project underlying Waismann’s writings.