Ludwig Wittgenstein

This new edition of Wittgenstein’s book, strictly following the author’s recommendations, allows a more immediate comprehension of the text and dissolves several false problems that had deceived readers and scholars for a century. The faithful interpretation of decimal numbers (which alone, according to Wittgenstein, “give perspicuity and clarity to the book”) shows that the Tractatus stems from a home-page containing seven cardinal propositions and develops level by level, by perfectly coherent reading units. Indeed, “the Tractatus must be read in accordance with the numbering system, and that demands that the reader follow the text after the manner of a logical tree, which is the way in which the book was composed and in which Wittgenstein arranged his philosophical remarks” (Peter Hacker, The Philosophical Quarterly). Thence, the Tractatus is no longer an obstacle course, where critics and students were strenuously committed to decipher anacolutes, semantic jumps and bizarre combinations. On the contrary, it reveals to be, at long last, a book that every reader, from her own point of view, can enjoy. The actual form of Wittgenstein’s work discloses the harmony and the aesthetic value of a philosophical text that is contemporary and is one of the most amazing masterpieces of world literature.

Centenary Edition

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Tractatus logico-philosophicus

Gavin

You already know the key superficial facts: it's brief, poetic, cryptic, it glorifies language. (Or is it damning language?) You might not know that it's intentionally cryptic:

  This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it - or similar thoughts... I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.


- or that it's the most beautiful piece of metaphysics ever, or that its author repudiated it entirely ten years later, or that actually the book repudiates itself -

  My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. 


or that (aside from the pure logic results) it probably isn't true, or that few people can possibly understand it without a lot of scholarly context, like without explanations 5 times the length of the original text. I recommend Anat Biletzki and Roger White. Grayling is good for the language bit too.

I spent maybe a year, on and off, trying to understand it. Some funny results here.

5 stars for poetry - not for its system, or its influence. (It has justified, or been appropriated in the service of, an awful lot of mystical poppycock. The author would be appalled to see this, while accepting that it was all his own fault.)

Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (Routledge Classics)

Matthew Royal

"Mathematics is a method of logic."

I had trouble understanding his references involving Frege and Russell, because I haven't read them yet. Even so, I think I followed the gist of his ideas. Interesting points about solipsism.

At first I thought I could use observations from this book to write some interesting inferencing software, but then Wittgenstein went the other direction and said that I couldn't describe logical rules like that... I have a feeling Frege and Russell will set me free, despite his criticism of Frege's "Theory of meaning of propositions and functions."

Khaled Alaasr

جميل، وحقيقي محتاج قراءة تانيه وثالثة عشان يتفهم اكتر :"D

Arron Kau

2.1 We make to ourselves pictures of facts.

2.12 The picture is a model of reality

4.003 Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language.

5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

6.211 In life it is never a mathematical proposition which we need, but we use mathematical propositions only in order to infer from propositions which do not belong to mathematics to others which equally do not belong to mathematics.

6.271 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

Donald

The end of the Tractatus is one of the great crescendos in the history of literature.

an early version of Tractatus logico-philosophicus

Prototractatus

Letizia

Ian Betteridge

Jaiden Ratti

David McDonagh

James Miller

Mustapha Othman

Jakub Witczak

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme brilliance, it captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers. For Wittgenstein, logic was something we use to conquer a reality which is in itself both elusive and unobtainable. He famously summarized the book in the following words: 'What can be said at all can be said clearly; and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.' David Pears and Brian McGuinness received the highest praise for their meticulous translation. The work is prefaced by Bertrand Russell's original introduction to the first English edition.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Centenary Edition

Reviews