Isn't part of Wittgenstein's problem with Mahler that it lacks discipline and order? Wittgenstein (and I think other members of his family) admired classical restraint - and therefore found the playing of his brother Paul Wittgenstein not just bad and hard to listen to but positively unseemly.
I started a Master's program and university teaching fellowship in 1966. I switched quickly into History and got my graduate degree there. Why the switch? Wittgenstein was the proverbial straw. It seemed to me that Philosophy was a pursuit to rip apart any system of thought. My own study of Descartes left me with the fact that the human mind is incapable of establishing certitude. No Problem! History didn't aim for certitude, just probability. I am aware that today Philosophy can be quite scientific, what with brain wiring and imaging thrown into the studies. I am pleased that even today the politically correct anti-science elements which dominate the Humanities have not yet completely ruined the fields of Philosophy and History. My evidence for that conclusion is largely based on the fact that these two fields are still male majority, rather than the gender studies types (who lack basic biology and neurology). My early introduction to Philosophy, esp. pragmatic Stoicism, has been my base. I am now 76 and have terminal cancer, and will do MAID when the end comes.
