Norman Malcolm - Definition and Overview

Norman Malcolm (1911 – 1990) is an American philosopher. He was born in Selden, Kansas. After earning a Harvard doctorate, he joined the Princeton faculty in 1940.

During his first term at Cambridge in 1938, he met Ludwig Wittgenstein and attended Wittgenstein's lectures on the philosophical foundations of mathematics throughout 1939. Malcolm remained one of Wittgenstein's closest friends, and his memoir of his time with Wittgenstein, published in 1958, is widely acclaimed as one of the most captivating and most accurate portraits of Wittgenstein's remarkable personality.

After serving in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1945, he spent most of his remaining American career at Cornell University (1947-1958), then emigrated to Britain.

His works include Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir; Wittgenstein: A Religious Point Of View?; Nothing Is Hidden: Wittgenstein's criticism of his early thought; Problems of Mind: Descartes to Wittgenstein; Studies in the theory of knowledge; Consciousness and causality; Memory and mind; Thought and knowledge; and Wittgensteinian themes (edited by Georg Henrik von Wright).