A must read even if you are not into philosophy of language. | Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Routledge...

What there is | Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Routledge Classics) | Ludwig Wittgenstein

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	• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Routledge Classics) Ludwig Wittgenstein Routledge, 2001 - 128 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

ow, my brain...awesome.

stick an alfred north whitehead lecture and a collection of hegel quotes into a blender and...it will make a mess. instead, i'd suggest reading a book. this one has lots of mathmematically themed explanations of what we know (or don't) and what we can express or understand (or can't). a little migraine-inducing at times, but then again no one said it was a stephen king novel. it's actually quite short, but since he fits such expansive theories into such neat little stanzas, it seems like 'war and peace' after someone dropped it from the sears tower. if you like thinking about thinking for thinking's sake, this guy is one pimped out g-money hustlah. or not. great stuff.

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A must read even if you are not into philosophy of language.

I first read the Tractatus in my first year of college. It really changed the way I viewed language and philosophy as a whole. While Chomsky explains the structure of language, Wittgenstein explains its function. "Language is use", if you understand that, then you understand Wittgenstein.

Or at least this is the start to understanding Wittgenstein. He goes on to say that all philosophical questions and debates are nothing more than the misuse of language. Well, this is where you must read the book and draw you own conclusion. And do read the book. It's very short and will take you less then a day to read; it is also a thousand times easier to read and comprehend then some people make it out to be.

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What there is

After this book, a sort of spa treatment for the over philosophical mind, deep cleaning our comprehension of the world into a notion of propositions and the relation between them, Wittgenstein himself cast off the training ladder of the Tractatus, as he advised his readers to do at the end of the book. He argued that the logical positivists he had inspired were mistaken in demanding excessive precision from human expressions. This led to his later theory of language games - picturing of reality is often only incidental to the success of language. On you go folks, good luck...

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Not for the average reader but thorough, if not at times tedious, in acomplishing its task...

The `Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' is the German monk and philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein's commentary on language and its logical failures. This not only applies to its uses in philosophy but in all fields. He explains in length how a logical proposition, by definition, cannot carry any weight because logic itself is only a framework, consisting of no substance. It can therefore only lead us to a simplification of what we already know; much in the same way that the mathematics, as a method, can lead to a simplification, if data and relationships are given but not create numbers where they didn't exist before. Because of their interchangeable nature, he often applies mathematics as a way of explaining his principles within language. These are laid out in step by step framework of propositions preceded by numbers and decimal places signifying their order and importance.

Although his book deals with an issue of great importance to philosophy and has received excellent reviews from many great philosophers, including an enthusiastic introduction by Bertrand Russell, I found this book to be, for the most part, pretty dull. After his general criticism of language is understood it seems that he spends most of the book going into an unnecessarily detailed proof of this being the case. As a foundational work, maybe this approach was necessary in order to explain away any grey areas and gaps through which criticism could be made. For the average reader however, who is interested in understanding new principles and gaining new philosophical insight, this book may come across as overly tedious, and overcomplicated. Wittgenstein's propositions on language could, I believe, be explained, still persuasively, but in much more understandable and readable manner, and in a great deal less space.

If you are interested in a step by step, text book style read, then maybe this book will interest you. If like me, however, you prefer to cut through the jargon and onto understanding the core principles, I would encourage you to skim-read through the first two thirds of the book picking out what makes sense and not spending too much time trying to understand what can in places seem like impossibly mind boggling equations, knowing that at the heart the principles themselves are pretty simple. From around page 60 onwards I found that the book got more interesting as Wittgenstein moves from proving the validity of his propositions to their implications. For me it was this end that made the book. Had I given up half way through, as was tempting, I would have missed the best part. It was in these last pages that the genius of Ludwig Wittgenstein really shone through.

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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.