Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"Philosophy is not a theory," asserted Austro-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), "but an activity." In this 1921 opus, his only philosophical work published during his lifetime, Wittgenstein defined the object of philosophy as the logical clarification of thoughts and proposed the solution to most philosophic problems by means of a critical method of linguistic analysis. In proclaiming philosophy as a matter of logic rather than of metaphysics, Wittgenstein created a sensation among intellectual circles that influenced the development of logical positivism and changed the direction of 20th-century thought. |
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... Theory of Knowledge , Principles of Physics , Ethics , and finally the Mystical ( das Mystische ) . In order to understand Mr Wittgenstein's book , it is necessary to realize what is the problem with which he is concerned . In the part ...
... theory . That which has to be in common between the sentence and the fact cannot , so he contends , be itself in turn said in language . It can , in his phraseology , only be shown , not said , for whatever we may say will still need to ...
... theory the proposition and the fact must have in common , if the proposition is to assert the fact . In certain elementary ways this is , of course , obvious . It is impossible , for example , to make a statement about two men ...
... theory of Symbolism with the statement ( 2.1 ) : " We make to ourselves pictures of facts . " A picture , he says , is a model of the reality , and to the objects in the reality correspond the elements of the picture : the picture ...
... theory but an activity . A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations . The result of philosophy is not ... theory are all of them things which that theory itself condemns as meaningless . With this proviso we will endeavour ...