David Collard
The Philosopher’s Philosopher
Frank Ramsey (1903–1930): A Sister’s Memoir
By Margaret Paul
Smith-Gordon 304pp £20 order from our bookshop
Frank Ramsey died a month before his 27th birthday from hepatitis, possibly contracted from swimming in the River Cam. Countless bright young men and women have left the party early, but Ramsey’s untimely death may be the single greatest loss to our country’s intellectual history. The Times obituarist wrote, ‘there was no one in Cambridge among the younger men who would be considered his equal for power and quality of mind, and also for boldness and originality of conception in one of the most difficult subjects of study.’
Ramsey is the philosopher’s philosopher, a venerated figure within academic circles but largely unknown in the wider world. As a teenager he translated the austere aphorisms of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into English, later working closely with Wittgenstein on the revised edition. He is most renowned as an economist, the author
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