Lage Kosten Language and Solitude Wittgenstein, Malinowski and the Habsburg Dilemma – Ernest Gellner

Ernest Gellner (1925-95) has been described as ‘one of the last great central European polymath intellectuals’. His last book, first published in 1998, throws light on two leading thinkers of their time. Wittgenstein, arguably the most influential and the most cited philosopher of the twentieth century, is famous for having propounded two radically different philosophical positions. Malinowski, the founder of modern British social anthropology, is usually credited with being the inventor of ethnographic fie…