Has anyone written a good biographical account of the relationship between Keynes and Wittgenstein?  I had to piece it together from quite a lot of different places, although much in Skidelsky of course.  As I recall both were very involved intellectually with the more elderly Russell at Cambridge, and both had big, perhaps terminal, arguments with him. Keynes in 1915 – a matter which Keynes still felt a need to address more than 20 years later in “Early Beliefs”.  Wittgenstein in 1922 - in Switzerland I think – after which Russell is reported to have said “he is now completely stupid”

I think Keynes got together with Wittgenstein around 1925 and got him back to London in 1929.  Paid the ticket, housed him, fixed him up with a post at Cambridge, and much later, canvassed for his professorship.  All this is common knowledge to many I am sure – but I never found anyone digging far into what seems to be at the heart of the matter, which was in part a clear joint dislike of Russell’s political activism.

The one book I did find useful is Carabelli’s “On Keynes's Method”.  She argues that the later philosophy of Wittgenstein is really there in Keynes himself from the very start - and even hints that Keynes’ own philosophical shadow fell, via Wittgenstein, onwards to Feyerabend etc.  My only difference with Prof Carabelli seemed to concern whether this was a good thing.  I am rather with Ernest Gelner on all that – as it seems was Russell.

Rob Tye