Project:About Wittgenstein: Difference between revisions

|content=-->“Don’t worry, I know you’ll never understand it”: with these words about the ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'', Wittgenstein addressed Russell and Moore during the assessment meeting to obtain a Ph.D. at Cambridge, where Wittgenstein presented the book as his thesis. And indeed, since its appearance, the book aroused continuous and strong interest because of its enigmatic appeal no less than its undisputed brilliance. The work for which Wittgenstein is best known, the ''Tractatus'' is the only one published by the author during his lifetime. In spite of its size (75 pages in the first English edition), the book represents one of the greatest masterpieces of 20th century philosophy: in the 525 propositions arranged in a progressive numbering system, in which seven main propositions incorporate a variable number of commentary propositions hierarchically organised, Wittgenstein summarises his early philosophy, establishing a relationship between the themes of logic and language, newly developed by logicism between the 19th and 20th centuries, and the traditional spiritual problems of ethics and value, which lie at the intersection of philosophy and religion.

The genesis of the tractarian ideas can be attributed to the unique blend of influences absorbed by the author during the early phase of his intellectual production. Well before engaging with academic philosophy, Wittgenstein assimilated the contributions of, among others, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Hertz, polemical literature, and Jewish thought, which were prevalent in the intellectual discourse of fin de siècle Vienna. This culturally vibrant environment was deeply committed to envisioning a reform of communicative, ethical, and aesthetic codes that would provide the proper space for existential reflections. Upon his exposure to the philosophies of Frege and Russell, Wittgenstein adopted the conviction that symbolism, serving as a unifying instrument, could integrate his understanding of the interplay between language and the world with the belief that essential problems could not be subject to intellectual discourse.

The first attempts to organize the material he developed at Cambridge took place between 1913 and 1914, during a period of self-isolation in Skjolden (Norway), where Wittgenstein built himself a cabin in order to find the necessary solitude to write his first notes (which later evolved into the [[Notes on Logic]] and the [[Notes Dictated to G.E. Moore in Norway|Notes dictated to Moore]]). With the outbreak of the First World War, Ludwig voluntarily enlisted in the Austrian army. The decision to subject himself to the harsh trials of military life in pursuit of a heroic effort to perfect himself and find definitive solutions to logical and existential problems is undoubtedly a testament to the romantic and anguished nature of the Austrian genius, which is reflected in Wittgenstein's war diaries. These [[Tagebücher 1914-1916|Notebooks (1914-1916)]] contain logical-philosophical observations along with more private and introspective annotations, many of which were preserved with little or no alteration in the book, following various processes of revision, selection, and organization, of which a key step was the composition of a "Prototractatus." The final version of the Tractatus was completed in 1918, but difficulties arose in finding a publisher willing to print a work of such modest size and due to Wittgenstein's stubborness (he insisted on not publishing the book at his own expense, considering it an affront to what he regarded as the work of his life), which delayed its publication until 1922. Prior to this, a German edition had been released in 1921 in the journal ''Annalen der Naturphilosophie'' under the title of ''Logisch-Philosphische Abhandlung'', but Wittgenstein repudiated it as a "pirated edition" because of alterations made during the printing process. Therefore, the only edition he considered correct was the English one, whose iconic title was suggested by G. E. Moore and which was published in London by Kegan Paul with a translation by F. P. Ramsey and C. K. Ogden, reviewed and approved by Wittgenstein. It was accompanied by an Introduction written by Russell, of which the author himself was never truly satisfied.

Despite their remarkable depth, the fundamental ideas of the ''Tractatus'' can be summarized in relatively few lines. "The world is everything that is the case" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#1|1]]) is the proposition that opens the first part of the book, dedicated to the relationship between reality and language. Wittgenstein essentially suggests that all meaningful propositions speak of "atomic facts" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#2|2]]), which are possible situations arising from the interaction of objects. Language reproduces these connections by designating each object with a simple sign, and a propositional sign is a "picture of reality" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#4.01|4.01]]) formed by combining these simple signs. The possibility of representation that links the world, thought, and linguistic expression reveals the presence of structural relationships among these entities, which Wittgenstein qualifies as "logical form, that is, the form of reality" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#2.18|2.18]]). This “picture-theory”, as it has been renamed, leads to the idea that logic is the common foundation of the world and language, upon which every statement is connected to the state of affairs it represents. However, the symbolic expression that transforms pure representational logical connections into communications within every-day language often generates distortions of the representational projection, which constitute "the most fundamental confusions (of which the whole philosophy is full)" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#3.324|3.324]]). In other words, "language disguises the thought" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#4.002|4.002]]).

The purpose of philosophy, which Wittgenstein qualifies as the "activity" of "logical clarifiation of thoughts" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#4.112|4.112]]), is thus the dissolution of philosophical problems themselves through the simple elucidation of the "logic of language" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#4.002|4.002]]). Adhering to the logicist program, Wittgenstein expresses in the book the belief that this activity can be better conducted through the analysis (that is, the examination and reduction into further indivisible signs, [[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#2.0201|2.0201]]) of propositions that give rise to misunderstandings, ultimately aiming at developing an ideal logical ideography (which he himself employed in a form he developed), that renders errors and misinterpretations impossible. While it is evident that Wittgenstein adopts a rational approach, he maintains that philosophy cannot be regarded on par with science. Instead, "all philosophy”, he writes, “is ‘Critique of language’" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#4.0031|4.0031]]), highlighting the focus on examining and clarifying the language used in philosophical discourse rather than constructing a separate body of knowledge akin to scientific theories.

What is illustrated by Wittgenstein here follows what he anticipates in the Preface of the book when he asserts that "what can be said at all can be said clearly": philosophy delimits the thinkable and, therefore, the speakable by circumscribing meaningful combinations of signs within language and drawing a limit between everything that can be meaningfully expressed and what is mere nonsense. Since language and the world have symmetrical formal relationships, "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#5.6|5.6]]), a famous aphorism with which the author introduces a series of brief and striking reflections on the theme of solipsism and the "metaphysical subject" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#5.633|5.633]]), expressing skepticism towards any form of sound philosophical discussion about the self. In fact, Wittgenstein adds, the peculiarity of the philosophical endeavor is that the limit of language (and hence of the world) is itself not susceptible to a meaningful linguistic representation because "propositions […] cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it—the logical form" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#4.12|4.12]]).

Not only propositions that deal with the logic of language but also any proposition formulated with the intent of expressing something supernatural ultimately turns out to be nonsensical. Essentially, this applies to every proposition that, in contrast to the laws of assertion, does not aim to represent a state of affairs but rather to formulate a value judgment about the world, beacuse "the sense of the world must lie outside of the world" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#6.41|6.41]]), that is, outside of the realm of what is linguistically representable. Therefore, at the end of the book, in a series of deliberately aphoristic and emotionally powerful statements, Wittgenstein argues that propositions of ethics, aesthetics, and religion are equally nonsensical ("it is clear that ethics cannot be expressed", [[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#6.421|6.421]]). What this kind of propositions would like to convey, interpreting the human instinct to go beyond the limits of language, belongs to the realm of the “inexpressible”, which "shows itself" and which Wittgenstein designates as "the mystical" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#6.522|6.522]]). The crucial distinction between "saying" and "showing" is introduced by Wittgenstein to illustrate that "what can be shown cannot be expressed" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#4.1212|4.1212]]) by means of language, thus acknowledging a certain allusive power in his elucidatory propositions too, that are capable of conveying inherently incommunicable ideas ("he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them", [[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#6.54|6.54]]). Nevertheless, he reiterates in concluding the book that the "only strictly correct method" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#6.53|6.53]]) of philosophy as a practice of clarification is to abstain from any "metaphysical" discourse, inviting therefore to recognize the nonsensical nature of tractarian propositions, to "surmont" them, and to rid oneself of them, throwing away the ladder after climbing up on it ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#6.54|6.54]]). Once the right view of the world and language that the ''Tractatus'' proposes is attained, the only task remaining is to give concreteness to its theses and to refrain from any nonsensical philosophical discourse: "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#7|7]]).

The assertive tone and the lack of further explanatory propositions after the well-known final statement of the ''Tractatus'' betray Wittgenstein's confidence in having "essentially solved the problems" (Preface). In his view, the book offered a definitive solution to philosophical problems of language, value, and existence, and both areas (logic and ethics) held equal importance as they carried the same significance for the author. The sense of the book, as stated in a letter sent by Wittgenstein to the publisher Ludwig von Ficker, is an ethical sense: "my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one. For the Ethical is delimited from within, as it were, by my book [...] In brief, I think: All of that which many are babbling today, I have defined in my book by remaining silent about it". Indeed, it is a rather paradoxical result that the thoughts which fill the book, despite their "unassailable and definitive" truth (Preface), are, strictly speaking, incommunicable! The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' presents a unique challenge in that it grapples with the limits of language and the boundaries of meaningful communication on “what is higher” ([[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#6.432|6.432]]). Wittgenstein must have been aware of this when, sanctioning the proverbial futility of philosophy, he wrote in the Preface that "the value of the work lies [...] in showing how little it matters for these problems to be solved".

Considering all this, it is at least reductive to narrow down the legacy of the book to its influence on the development of neologicist philosophy, as is often still done today. It is true that the ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' contains the fundamental theoretical elements (from logical atomism to truth-functionality to the verification principle) that were later elaborated by the Vienna Circle (although Wittgenstein began to suspect that some of his statements lent themselves to misunderstandings precisely because of the neo-positivist interpretation offered by the Circle). However, the book shows several connections with the rationalist and romantic German philosophy of the time and, thanks to the ease with which the author moves between logic and epistemology, ontology and ethics, it constitutes an irreplaceable document not only as a basis to access Wittgenstein's thought and his later production but also, more generally, for understanding the intellectual culture of Europe in the 20th century, which remained deeply fascinated by this philosophical masterpiece.

In the only footnote of the book, Wittgenstein himself provided instructions for understanding the numerical hierarchy underlying the lines of reasoning presented in the ''Tractatus''. Each of the main propositions is accompanied by sequentially numbered comment propositions with a single decimal place; in turn, these incorporate comment propositions with two decimal places, and so on. Nowadays, thanks to modern computer techniques, many digital tools have multiplied to reproduce the tree-like structure at the base of the book in the form of a diagram (as in the case of the [http://tractatus.lib.uiowa.edu/ University of Iowa ''Tractatus'' map]) or through collapsible "drawers" that allow hiding or showing the commentary subpropositions. The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project has developed its own version of the tree-like view of the ''Tractatus'' to offer users a reading experience as closely aligned as possible with Wittgenstein's indications. Go to [[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(tree-like_view)|Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (tree-like view)]]<br/>

Furthermore, with the aim of facilitating the comparison between original editions and translations of the work, we have developed a multilingual interface that allows side-by-side display of the original texts and the translations which are currently available on the website. Go to the [[Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(multilingual_side-by-side_view)|Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (side-by-side view)]]<!--}}-->