Tractatus Logico-philosophicusThe Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) (Latin for Logical Philosophical Treatise or Treatise on Logic and Philosophy) is the only book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that was published during his lifetime. The project had a broad goal: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science. It is recognized by philosophers as a significant philosophical work of the twentieth century. G. E. Moore originally suggested the work's Latin title as homage to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus by Baruch Spinoza. Wittgenstein wrote the notes for the Tractatus while he was a soldier during World War I and completed it during a military leave in the summer of 1918. It was first published in German in 1921 as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. The Tractatus was influential chiefly amongst the logical positivist philosophers of the Vienna Circle, such as Rudolf Carnap and Friedrich Waismann. Bertrand Russell's article "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism" is presented as a working out of ideas that he had learned from Wittgenstein. The Tractatus employs an austere and succinct literary style. The work contains almost no arguments as such, but rather consists of declarative statements, or passages, that are meant to be self-evident. The statements are hierarchically numbered, with seven basic propositions at the primary level (numbered 1-7), with each sub-level being a comment on or elaboration of the statement at the next higher level (e.g., 1, 1.1, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13). In all, the Tractatus comprises 526 numbered statements. Wittgenstein's later works, notably the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, criticised many of his earlier ideas in the Tractatus. |
From inside the book
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... 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 itself is a fact . The fact that things have a certain relation to each other ...
... picture . Mr Wittgenstein maintains that everything properly philosophical belongs to what can only be shown , to what is in common between a fact and its logical picture . It results from this view that nothing correct can be said in ...
... picture ( true or false ) of the fact , and has in common with the fact a certain structure . It is this common structure which makes it capable of being a picture of the fact , but the structure cannot itself be put into words , since ...
... picture of the world ( true or false ) . It is clear that however different from the real one an imagined world may be , it must have some- thing — a form - in common with the real world . This fixed form consists of the objects . The ...
... picture presents the facts in logical space , existence and non existence of atomic facts . - The picture is a model of reality . To the objects correspond in the picture the elements of the picture . The elements of the picture stand ...