page_title: Ludwig Wittgenstein
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Ludwig Wittgenstein / 1947–1951: Final years / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Wittgenstein on his deathbed, 1951
context_page_description: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
  From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. During his lifetime he published just one slim book, one article, one book review and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. His teacher, Bertrand Russell, described Wittgenstein as
  "perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating".
  Born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families, he inherited a fortune from his father in 1913. He initially made some donations to artists and writers, and then, in a period of severe personal depression after the First World War, he gave away his entire fortune to his brothers and sisters. Three of his four brothers committed suicide, which Wittgenstein had also contemplated.
context_section_description: Wittgenstein began work on his final manuscript, MS 177, on 25 April 1951. It was his 62nd birthday on 26 April. He went for a walk the next afternoon, and wrote his last entry that day, 27 April. That evening, he became very ill; when his doctor told him he might live only a few days, he reportedly replied, "Good!" Joan stayed with him throughout that night, and just before losing consciousness for the last time on 28 April, he told her: "Tell them I've had a wonderful life." Norman Malcolm describes this as a "strangely moving utterance". 
   
  Four of Wittgenstein's former students arrived at his bedside—Ben Richards, Elizabeth Anscombe, Yorick Smythies, and Maurice O'Connor Drury. Anscombe and Smythies were Catholics; and, at the latter's request, a Dominican friar, Father Conrad Pepler, also attended. (Wittgenstein had asked for a "priest who was not a philosopher" and had met with Pepler several times before his death.) They were at first unsure what Wittgenstein would have wanted, but then remembered he had said he hoped his Catholic friends would pray for him, so they did, and he was pronounced dead shortly afterwards. 
  Wittgenstein was given a Catholic burial at Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge. Drury later said he had been troubled ever since about whether that was the right thing to do. In 2015 the ledger gravestone was refurbished by the British Wittgenstein Society.
  
  On his religious views, Wittgenstein was said to be greatly interested in Catholicism and was sympathetic to it. However, he did not consider himself to be a Catholic. According to Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein saw Catholicism more as a way of life than as a set of beliefs he personally held, considering that he did not accept any religious faith. 
  I won't say 'See you tomorrow' because that would be like predicting the future, and I'm pretty sure I can't do that.
  — Wittgenstein, 1949
  
  Wittgenstein was said by some commentators to be agnostic, in a qualified sense.
caption: Wittgenstein on his deathbed, 1951
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