I do recall the book mentioning that W. was outraged by Russell's
willingness to dispense with religion and social convention. It
would be interesting to compare Russell and Wittgenstein. They were peers
or near-peers in terms of social class (Popper was hopelessly bourgeois,
of course) but whereas Russell could use this to free himself from
"common" morality (*), W. appeared to cling to social convention even
while he tried to destroy the pillars of ordinary philosophy.
W must have been a truly unique and bizarre man. In the book Russell clearly is in awe of W. I wonder if that is his appeal to philosophers who by definition are interested in and extraordinarily good at well thinking. Popper was an accentuated normal man. Smarter than almost everyone, more ambitious more insecure more grandiose but all of his traits are just the extremes of normal while W seems to have been outside in both his intellect and his interactions with the world. The question I have is whether his extreme intelligence pushed him out of the norm or was he outside the norm emotionally and this in a way freed his intellect to explore novel areas.
