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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... 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 is represented by the fact that in the picture its elements ...
... reality . ( The existence of atomic facts we also call a positive fact , their non - existence a negative fact . ) Atomic facts are independent of one another . 2.062 2.063 2.I 2.II 2.12 2.13 2.131 2.14 2.141 2.15 37 TRACTATUS LOGICO ...
... reality ; it reaches up to it . It is like a scale applied to reality . Only the outermost points of the dividing lines touch the object to be measured . 2.1513 According to this view the representing relation which makes it a picture ...
... reality in order to be able to represent it after its manner - rightly or falsely - is its form of repre- sentation . The picture can represent every reality whose form it has . The spatial picture , everything spatial , the coloured ...
... reality , its truth or falsity consists . In order to discover whether the picture is true or false we must compare it with reality . It cannot be discovered from the picture alone whether it is true or false . There is no picture which ...