Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (International Library of Philosophy) (Routledge Great Minds) (Routledge Classics)

by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Brian McGuiness (Translator), David Pears (Translator), D F Pears (Translator), and B. F. McGuinness (Translator)

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.

• ISBN10: 0415254086
• ISBN13: 9780415254083
• Publish Date: 18 May 2001 (first published March 1922)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Imprint: Routledge
• Edition: 2nd edition
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 142
• Language: English

Reviews

[arronkau]

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.