The two most influential philosophers who worked in Britain in the last century were Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Russell, thanks to his pronouncements on everything from sexual morality to geopolitics, was a public figure. Wittgenstein, by contrast, was a slightly mysterious figure even to his fellow philosophers.
Wittgenstein was born on 26 April 1889 and died in 1951. When I took my first degree in Philosophy (1978-81) he was still a dominating figure in the discipline - many papers began with one of his aphorisms. So I was rather proud that my report on our Philosophy of Mind option said I was "not dazzled by Wittgenstein".
Here John Searle and this blog's hero Bryan Magee discuss Wittgenstein's ideas. This is an episode from Magee's 1987 series The Great Philosophers, and proof that there are nothing wrong with talking heads if they have something interesting to say.
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