DEATH OF A SALESMAN             Back in the 1940s Arthur Miller wrote a play with this title. The salesman was Willie Loman, and in the later film he was played superbly by Dustin Hoffman. In the story Willie’s highly successful career as a salesman is fading fast and he is very disappointed in the way…

  I asked myself “Which modern philosopher is the greatest?” And after much  cogitation I decided on Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian thinker who made two absolutely definitive contributions to the history of Western thought. Immanuel Kant ran a close second, but Wittgenstein’s role in defining the nature and direction of philosophy since his day (1889-1951)…