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== An outline of Wittgenstein's thought == | == An outline of Wittgenstein's thought == | ||
Wittgenstein's philosophical production touched upon numerous critical points in contemporary philosophy. It is not incorrect to say that Wittgenstein's major concern throughout his life was the investigation on language, but it would be reductive to limit the scope of his thought to the philosophy of language and logic. He was stimulated by Hertz, Frege, and Russell, but also Kraus, Spengler, Weininger, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche. One cannot reduce his influence to the philosophical area either: he was an attentive reader of Goethe and appreciator of German poetry. Music, moreover, and particularly the classical romantic music of the Liederists and Brahms, remained one of his primary sources of inspiration. | Wittgenstein's philosophical production touched upon numerous critical points in contemporary philosophy. It is not incorrect to say that Wittgenstein's major concern throughout his life was the investigation on language, but it would be reductive to limit the scope of his thought to the philosophy of language and logic. He was stimulated by Hertz, Frege, and Russell, but also Kraus, Spengler, Weininger, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche. One cannot reduce his influence to the philosophical area either: he was an attentive reader of Goethe and appreciator of German poetry. Music, moreover, and particularly the classical romantic music of the Liederists and Brahms, remained one of his primary sources of inspiration. | ||
[[File:The Fountain in Winter at Trinity College Cambridge.jpg|thumb|320x320px|The Trinity College in Cambridge, where Wittgenstein mostly lived and held lessons from 1929 to 1941]] | |||
At the time of the ''Tractatus'', the influence of the prevailing logicism restricted his consideration of symbolism to a representational and “realist” perspective, although he brought brilliant innovations to coeval philosophy. The key idea of this first book is the distinction between what can be said (i.e. represented, thus the facts in the world) and what can only be shown (i.e. the forms of the representations); the ''Tractatus'' aims to delimit the realm of meaningful propositions to the realm of science and to prove that ethics, aesthetics, and logic are alike in that they cannot be expressed by words. Wandering between the strictly logical and mystical, Wittgenstein discusses topics that range from the picture-theory of proposition and logical atomism to truth-functionality, from the foundations of ontology and epistemology to the conception of the normativity of natural laws, from reflection on solipsism to ethics, aesthetics and even theology. The logical Wittgenstein of the ''Tractatus'' particularly conditioned the emergence of the neo-positivist philosophy of the so-called Vienna Circle, which was formed in the Austrian capital during the first post-war period and brought together thinkers such as Moritz Schlick (1882-1936), Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), Otto Neurath (1882-1945) and Friedrich Waismann (1896-1959). | At the time of the ''Tractatus'', the influence of the prevailing logicism restricted his consideration of symbolism to a representational and “realist” perspective, although he brought brilliant innovations to coeval philosophy. The key idea of this first book is the distinction between what can be said (i.e. represented, thus the facts in the world) and what can only be shown (i.e. the forms of the representations); the ''Tractatus'' aims to delimit the realm of meaningful propositions to the realm of science and to prove that ethics, aesthetics, and logic are alike in that they cannot be expressed by words. Wandering between the strictly logical and mystical, Wittgenstein discusses topics that range from the picture-theory of proposition and logical atomism to truth-functionality, from the foundations of ontology and epistemology to the conception of the normativity of natural laws, from reflection on solipsism to ethics, aesthetics and even theology. The logical Wittgenstein of the ''Tractatus'' particularly conditioned the emergence of the neo-positivist philosophy of the so-called Vienna Circle, which was formed in the Austrian capital during the first post-war period and brought together thinkers such as Moritz Schlick (1882-1936), Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), Otto Neurath (1882-1945) and Friedrich Waismann (1896-1959). | ||