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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... structure of propositions and the nature of logical inference are first dealt with . Thence we pass successively to Theory of Knowledge , Principles of Physics , Ethics , and finally the Mystical ( das Mystische ) . In order to ...
... structure of the sentence and the structure of the fact . This is perhaps the most fundamental thesis of Mr Wittgenstein's theory . That which has to be in common between the sentence and the fact cannot , so he contends , be itself in ...
... thought , the score , the waves of sound , all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation which holds between language and the world . To all of them the logical structure is common . ( Like the ΙΟ INTRODUCTION.
Ludwig Wittgenstein. them the logical structure is common . ( Like the two youths , their two horses and their lilies in the story . They are all in a certain sense one ) " ( 4.014 ) . The possibility of a proposition representing a fact ...
... structure of logic . Mr Wittgenstein accordingly banishes identity and adopts the convention that different letters are to mean different things . In practice , identity is needed as between a name and a description or between two ...