The College Record 2022

A few years later I returned to Oxford where I was a Junior Research Fellow and
thereafter University Lecturer in the Philosophy of Mathematics, and to my delight
was again a colleague of Brian, though then in the Oxford rather than West Coast
way. We were both members of Freddie Ayer’s Tuesday Group, and I remember
meticulously crafted and deeply insightful papers Brian read to the group, including
“Language and reality in the Tractatus”, and “Philosophy of language and philosophy
of mind in Wittgenstein”.
Obituaries
One of Brian’s very great accomplishments was editing the Vienna Circle Collection,
25 volumes of writings by members of the Vienna Circle, published over a 31-
year period, between 1973 and 2004. This massive and invaluable project was
preceded by Brian’s publication in 1967 of Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis from
Waismann’s notes of dictation by Wittgenstein (for which in 1979 he published an
English translation with Joachim Schulte).
In 1981 Brian brought Tscha Hung, the Chinese philosopher who had participated
in meetings of the Vienna Circle in the early 1930s, to Oxford, and Hung attended
meetings of the Tuesday Group. I found him an extraordinarily exotic figure, combining
the Vienna Circle of 50 years earlier with then still very limited western contact with
China. His presence was indicative of Brian’s knowledge of every aspect of the
Vienna Circle. Tscha Hung gave Brian his own copy of the Vienna Circle manifesto,
Wissenschaftlische Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis. Brian kindly allowed me
to photocopy it, with which he included a note, “God knows how it survived the
Cultural Revolution”.
In 1988 Brian published Wittgenstein A Life: Young Ludwig, covering the first 32 of
Wittgenstein’s 63 years, up to publication of the Tractatus. The event was celebrated
by a book launch in Blackwell’s at which Colin Haycraft, its publisher, spoke movingly
and amusingly about this long sought and tremendously valued publication (Brian
acknowledged Haycraft in the Preface as “an old friend” who had “shown himself
capable of combining encouragement with infinite patience”). Michael Dummett’s
review, in The Tablet, speaks of its “richness and psychological depth” and of its
author as “writing with great understanding and a keen talent for conveying a mood,
an atmosphere, a cast of mind”, and said that Wittgenstein’s philosophy had been
deftly integrated into the narrative in such a way as to provide “just enough of an
account of the philosophy to give the most unprepared reader some sense of what
is going on, and, for the rest, interspersing the narrative with vivid quotations that
convey Wittgenstein’s intense preoccupation with philosophical problems”. In that
same year, Brian left the unique beauty of his Oxford College and moved to the
unique beauty of Siena, with two years in between at the Netherlands Institute for
Advanced Study.
In 1999 Brian invited me to give two lectures on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of
mathematics in his seminar in Siena. It was a tremendous privilege to speak on that
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