What You Need to Know Before You Read

Ludwig Wittgenstein's

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

An Essay by Vekquin

The purpose of this Web page is to give the reader an overview of several different interpretations of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, and then to give the author's own interpretation of the book.

This Web page was created with the following readers in mind:

Those who have not yet, but who are going to read the Tractatus.
Those who have read the book and can't make heads or tails of it.
Those who would like a history of the events leading up to the writing of the book, to aid in its comprehension.
Those who have taken an alignment with the classical interpreters who think that the book contains an original philosophical theory (such as "the picture theory of sentence meaning", "logical atomism", etc.)
Those who have taken an alignment with the interpretations of the "post-modernists", "feminists" and "ethicists" (or whatever other trendy words you'd like to call them; e.g. Diamond, Conant, Tanesini, et. al.)

1. The history of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

2. An overview of various interpretations of the Tractatus

3. The two most popular interpretations of the Tractatus

4. Why the "post-modern" interpretation is stupid

5. Why the Tractatus is easily and often misunderstood

6. My own interpretation of the Tractatus

7. The seven main propositions of the Tractatus

8. Bibliography

9. A list of online articles about Wittgenstein

Ogden translation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - Read it online for free!

The History of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The Tractatus has had a rough life, just as its author did. Wittgenstein worked on the book for seven years and completed it in 1918 while he was on front-line combat for Germany in World War One. Three months after he finished the book, while it was still on his person, he was taken hostage by the Italians as a prisoner of war. After his release several months later, he approached five publishers over a two year period, but none of them wanted to publish the book. Then with the help of his famous philosopher friend, Bertrand Russell, the book was finally published in 1921 (see, it's not what you know that matters, it's only who you know that matters in this world). The publisher, Ostwald, translated it from German to English and printed it in both languages simultaneously, although he made a lot of serious errors in both his translation and in changes he made to the original German text. {von Wright, Letters to C.K. Ogden; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973}

After the first version of the book was published, Wittgenstein corrected all of the mistakes and sent the corrected manuscript to Russell who accidentally lost it. Then, over the next several months, C.K. Ogden, F. P. Ramsey, Wittgenstein, and to some extent Russell, all together set about trying to correct Ostwald's mistakes. {von Wright, Letters to C.K. Ogden; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973} By this time Wittgenstein no longer had his heart in the project, but with the help of his friends he tried to correct Ostwald's version as much as he could, then it was published by Ogden in 1922. For years following that publication, Wittgenstein and Ogden continued exchanging letters wherein Wittgenstein made more corrections to the 1922 publication. It was later re-published (in 1961) by D.F. Pears & B.F. McGuinness, who implemented the requests by Wittgenstein found in his personal letters to Ogden, and they also tried to modernize the language of the book, but in doing so, they distorted the meanings of some of the words, which only adds more difficulty to understanding an already very difficult text. Wittgenstein's friend Ramsey had a two-week conversation with Wittgenstein about the meaning of the book, for several hours per day, during which time, Wittgenstein made more corrections to the text, which can now be found in Ramsey's personal, unpublished records. The two versions of the book are still not completely corrected, but are as good as they are ever going to get; it has been over fifty years since the last version and no one has tried to make an updated version that fixes the mistakes of both Odgen and Pears & McGuiness, as well as implements the corrections Wittgenstein gave to Ramsey. Besides personal peculiarities of word usage in the book, it is difficult to translate into English because there are certain German ways of thinking in it that do not have English equivalents.

The Pears & McGuiness translation is incorrect in the preface where it states that the book was published only in German in 1921; the book was in fact published in both German and English simultaneously in 1921, and because the original completely corrected manuscript in German was lost, Wittgenstein had a hell of a time trying to correct Ostwald's errors in English using an older, uncorrected German copy. {von Wright}

According to translators Pears & McGuiness, the book "evolved as a continuation of and reaction to Russell and Frege's conceptions of logic and language. Bertrand Russell supplied an introduction to the book claiming that it 'certainly deserves ... to be considered an important event in the philosophical world.' It is fascinating to note that Wittgenstein thought little of Russell's introduction, claiming that it was riddled with misunderstandings." (Pears & McGuiness; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961)

Strangely, the common knowledge that Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus with Russell and Frege in mind is often ignored by interpreters who read the book as if it were a theoretical work rather than a description of logical problems that arise when logic is used illegitimately, and then solutions to those problems are given. These are not theories: they are descriptions of problems and descriptions of solutions to those problems. This is what Wittgenstein says in his preface, yet this is strangely ignored by almost all classical interpreters who have been insisting for decades that it is a theoretical work. The other strange thing about nearly all interpreters of the book, is that all throughout the book, Wittgenstein describes the theories of other logicians before he goes about telling them the flaws in their theories and the solutions they can use, but interpreters read the whole book as if all of it is only what Wittgenstein says about logic. They somehow overlook the fact that in several places in the book, he first describes a theory (or a part of a theory) that was prevalent during the time he was writing the book, before he goes into his own thoughts about that theory. The book was written specifically for logicians and philosophers who use language and formal logic illegitimately. While writing it, Wittgenstein had in mind Russell, Frege, Moore, Kant, Schopenhauer and many other philosophers who were trying to force formal logic to do what it is not capable of doing. (The book ultimately tells philosophers that they should not try to pretend like they are scientists.)

Leading up to the writing of the Tractatus, Kenneth Blackwell illuminates the relationship between Russell and Wittgenstein through their personal letters to each other, and especially through Russell's personal letters to Lady Ottoline Morrell. Blackwell declares in conclusion of his reading of Russell's and Wittgenstein's personal letters to each other during the time Wittgenstein was working on the Tractatus:

[A] study of [Russell's] Theory of Knowledge unpublished manuscript would show the Tractatus to be far more directed against Russell's philosophy than has been supposed. {p.26 Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein; Block, Irving. ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981}

Blackwell says Russell was having some difficulties solving some logical problems in his new theory (which he wrote about in his article The Philosophical Importance of Mathematical Logic in 1911, just before he met Wittgenstein) as well as expressing hesitations about his logical theory numerous times to Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1911-1913. {p.20 Block}

Shortly after Russell met Wittgenstein, he was working on a book entitled Theory of Knowledge, which he never published because Wittgenstein pointed out many errors in its logic, which Russell could not find solutions for. Wittgenstein read what Russell had written between 1911 and 1913, and criticized it so harshly that Russell abandoned the project, stating in several personal letters to Lady Ottoline that Wittgenstein is correct in pointing out the logical errors in his new theory of knowledge, and that Russell did not know how to fix the errors; so he hoped Wittgenstein would write the first eleven chapters of the book (but that never occured).

Wittgenstein also criticised Russell's logical theory in the last chapter of his published book: Problems of Philosophy. Wittgenstein's criticism includes an elaboration on the fact that that logical forms cannot give the 'sense' of a proposition, nor of the relationship of propositions to each other. In Russel's book Problems of Philosophy, he promoted the concept of the 'sense' of relations in logical statements; denoting 'belief', 'judgement', etc. and he developed this theory further in his unpublished manuscript Theory of Knowledge. {p.24 Block}

A letter to Russell in 1912 shows Wittgenstein at work on "the complex problem" of Russell's "logical problem", i.e.: the theory of symbolism. {p.19 Block} In 1912, during the time that Russell and Wittgenstein were having logical arguments, Russell worked on an unpublished paper entitled: "What is Logic?" Blackwell finds that:

[T]herein, logic is defined as 'the study of the forms of complexes'. A 'complex' for Russell is indefinable; 'form' he cannot get into a definition either; so he abandons the paper. In order to avoid infinite regress, the form of a complex must not be considered a constituent of the complex. Judgement is excluded from consideration intentionally, there is no form listed for judgement. He lists forms by listing symbols of various atomic forms. {p.19 Block}

In 1912 Wittgenstein discussed with Frege his and Russell's theory of symbolism. The theory was basically that there cannot be different "types of things" in logic, because 'a proper theory of symbolism must render any theory of types "superfluous".' {p.19 Block} For example, in the form of the statement "Socrates is mortal", the variables for "Socrates" and "mortality" must be of different kinds. If they are, they will not be substituted for the wrong way around. Blackwell says "[t]his may have led to Wittgenstein's concern with the conditions that would have to be fulfilled by a logically perfect language." {p.19 Block} In reading Wittgenstein's letters to Russell, Blackwell found that Wittgenstein was accusing Russell of imperfect symbolism. He adds that "[B]oth men were concerned with an ideal notation, but that was not their only concern in Logic." {p.19 Block}

During the time Wittgenstein was at Cambridge studying logic and the foundations of mathematics, Russell and Whitehead were working on a treatise in 1912 to address the problem:

Physics exhibits sensations as functions of physical objects. But epistemology demands that physical objects should be exhibited as functions of sensations. Thus we have to solve the equations giving sensations in terms of physical objects, so as to make them give physical objects in terms of sensations. That is all. {p.13 Block}

Blackwell explains that in Russell's book The Problems of Philosophy (1912) he "had promoted the concept of the 'sense' of the subordinate relation in belief statements to being a characteristic of the multiple judging relation. ... He [also] thought he had to admit that relations have being, and the case for qualities appeared almost as strong." {p.18 Block}

In June of 1913, in reference to Russell's theory of judgment published in The Problems of Philosophy, Wittgenstein says: "I can now express my objection to your theory of judgment exactly: I believe it is obvious that, from the proposition "A judges that (say) a is in the Relation R to b", if correctly analysed, the proposition "aRb.v.~aRb" must follow directly without the use of any other premiss. This condition is not fulfilled by your theory. {p.19 Block}

In thinking about Wittgenstein's criticism, in 1913 Russell wrote in a personal letter to Lady Ottoline:

The supposed logical constants, then, whose existence Wittgenstein was concerned to deny were not only the supposed references of words like 'and', 'or', 'not', etc.; nor these together with the supposed referents of the words 'some', 'all', and 'is identical with' -- though these (truth functions, generality, and identity) did in time become the three ranges of so-called logical constants that he thought he had to deal with. Originally the notion covered much more: all the forms of propositions -- the general notion of predicate, the general notion of dual relation, triple relation, and any other forms there might be of whatever complexity and level had been supposed to be logical objects, and Wittgenstein was denying them that status. {p.19 Block}

Russell told Lady Ottoline in an October 1913 letter that his manuscript Theory of Knowledge "goes to pieces when it touches Wittgenstein's problems." {p.20 Block}

Blackwell explains that elucidation 5.542 of the Tractatus criticizes part of Russell's theory of judgment. Wittgenstein illustrates how Russell's proposition "A believes that p" can be treated as a truth-functional of the form "p says p". {p.24 Block} Wittgenstein's "analysis dispenses with the subject and correlates the constituents of the proposition with the constituents of the fact about it. Russell was much attracted to ... [the analysis] and in 1925 devoted to it Appendix C of the second edition of Principia Mathematica." {p.24 Block}

By the end of 1912 since Wittgenstein had learned everything Russell had to teach, Russell thought of his job then as guiding Wittgenstein's work and keeping him stable. Wittgenstein was known for having violent outbursts, but Russell actually liked Wittgenstein's outbursts because Russell felt that he was prone to them himself, although Russell never allowed himself to have his own violent outbursts (so apparently Russell was living vicariously through Wittgenstein to some extent). In October of 1911, on the first day Russell met Wittgenstein, Russell said of Wittgenstein that he is "obstinate and perverse." {p.9 Block} Within a year, several screaming arguments had already occured before Russell tells Lady Ottoline on the 30th of November 1912: "[H]e is a great task but quite worth it." {p.9 Block}

How absurd and wonderful life was a hundred years ago when logicians had screaming arguments about Logic! This no longer occurs; those with passion and depth of character are all dead. Today philosophers are mere robots, lifeless and pointless: Incapable of creating their own great works, today's philosophers are vampires who do nothing of their own, but they make a living off the hard work of the great philosophers who came before them. There are no great philosphers alive. Today there are only parasites who make a living interpreting and re-interpreting the works of others. Unlike a hundred years ago, today, Philosophy is just another normal job for normal people, rather than a haven for freaks and weirdos who can see deeper into the universe than the average person.

The worst part about today's parasitic philosophers is the fact that they often completely, totally misunderstand the philosophers of the past that they are supposed to be "experts" at understanding. The other disgusting thing about it is that they make a lot of money misunderstanding the works of others. Philosophy is no longer revolutionary; rather, it is utterly nauseating.

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Various interpretations of the Tractatus

To give a succinct overview of several different interpretations of the Tractatus, I will quote Irving Block, the editor of the excellent book of essays: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein (pp. vii-xi; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981) Block reveals his own interpretation of the Tractatus within his summarization of others' interpretations:

The essays in this volume range over a wide area of Wittgenstein's thought. More significantly, they represent divergent interpretations of Wittgenstein's fundamental ideas. It is now over twenty-five years since Wittgenstein's death and there is still no general consensus as to how one should understand his philosophy. ... Mr McGuiness takes the apparently realistic metaphysics suggested in the first paragraphs of the Tractatus as a kind of 'myth', or as a heuristic device to get us to see something about the nature of a proposition. Wittgenstein never intended these remarks as a piece of traditional metaphysics. Names do not designate concrete particulars and the formation of elementary sentences from names is not dependent upon arriving first at the 'meanings' of names through ostension. The converse was true of Russell's atomism, and thus for Russell there could be no false atomic propositions. In the Tractatus, however, the formation of elementary propositions was a strictly formal matter involving no empirical concern for the truth of the proposition. The sense of a proposition is independent of its truth and therefore elementary propositions could be true or false. The 'seeing' of the sense of a proposition was a matter of 'logic' not science or empirical observation. This is what is meant by a proposition 'showing' its sense. The objects and substance of the 1's and 2's of the Tractatus are terms that refer to structure or logical space which is a priori or 'unalterable' (2.023). All the interpretations, from Russell onwards, that saw in the Tractatus an attempt to say something about the nature of the world of concrete things have been misguided.

Mr Pears' essay, which attempts to reconstruct the argument that led Wittgenstein in the Tractatus to promulgate his doctrine of the logical independence of elementary propositions, gives us just such an interpretation. This doctrine, Mr Pears argues, is the culmination of the demand that the sense of a proposition be determinate and that in the ultimate analysis we have only one name for each simple particular so that there can be no "competition" among names ... . These simple particulars Wittgenstein called 'objects' and it would seem to be a matter of empirical analysis of language and the world to isolate names and objects, not of formal analysis. The text of the Tractatus lends itself to both Mr Pears' and Mr McGuiness' interpretation and therefore provides difficulties for both.

...Wittgenstein's denial of the possibility of a simple theory of types was based on the doctrine of 'showing' --- that one cannot formulate a theory that will tell you when a proposition is well-formed. If it is understood and has a use, it is well-formed. ... But if understanding a sentence is a primitive notion, one does not require a theory of types to guide one in the formation of sentences. This understanding is purely 'logical' or formal. The ... formal side of the Tractatus ... is the source of Wittgenstein's rejection of a theory of types or any kind of meta-language that purports to 'say' when a proposition is well-formed.

The essays by Dr Hacker and Professor Stenius provide different viewpoints on one of Wittgenstein's most enigmatic conceptions, the picture theory of meaning. A question common to both ... is how far Wittgenstein went in rejecting the picture theory of meaning in his later writings. This question is tied to the further issue of how necessary the structure of logical atomism is for the theory. Dr Hacker takes the view that the picture theory is inseparable from the atomism of the Tractatus ... . Professor Stenius on the other hand believes that the picture theory, though connected with the atomism of the Tractatus, can nevertheless stand on its own as a plausible and workable theory of sentence meaning. Wittgenstein never rejected this theory, though he may have modified it in his later writings. All those passages in the later writings which refer to the 'pictoriality' of the proposition, Professor Stenius sees as a refinement of the picture theory of the Tractatus.

Several essays deal with the possibility of a theory of language. ... Mr Dummett thinks that Wittgenstein's intention ... is to propound a theory of language ... . Both Professors Anscombe and Winch deny that Wittgenstein thought a theory of language in the traditional sense was possible. ... Dr Kenny's essay attempts an interesting comparison between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations. What they have in common is that for both language is inexplicable. As Dr Kenny says on the last page of his essay, "...the ultimate criterion of meaning is indescribable (in the Tractatus, because it takes place outside the world; in the Philosophical Investigations, because all description is within a language game)." This expresses a view that might be said to unite the positions of Mr McGuiness and ... Professor Winch, in contradistinction to those of Mr Dummett and Professor Anscombe, who interpret Wittgenstein as attempting to formulate a theory of language.

...Dr Blackwell's essay ... is an account of the personal relationship of the early Wittgenstein with Russell. Dr Blackwell attempts to show, primarily from the private letters of Russell to Lady Ottoline Morrell, how light can be thrown on some of the philosophical problems these two men discussed through the knowledge of their personal relationship. This approach is seen as particularly fruitful in understanding Wittgenstein's criticisms of Russell's theory of judgment and Russell's reaction to them. Dr Blackwell, who is the Archivist of the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University, utilizes the unpublished papers and letters of Russell to trace this history.

In addition to the general disagreements among interpreters, outlined by Irving Block (above) there are other various claims interpreters have made about the Tractatus which contradict each other:

Peter Hacker describes how Wittgenstein's later rejection of logical atomism dissolves "the picture theory", as opposed to what Stenius says, which is that "the picture theory" can stand on its own, without needing logical atomism as its foundation. {p.99 Block} Hacker also says the one point of the Tractatus is: blah {p.85 Block} He takes 5.471-5.4711 and reports that these are the main point of the Tractatus. He says that the "picture theory of the proposition" contains Wittgenstein's answer. I'm not sure what he means by "answer"... to what question? He does not mention the question that is supposedly being answered by the Tractatus.

Hacker supports his interpretation by claiming that the Picture/Model Theory has six theses in it and three corrollaries. He calls these theses "The Doctrine of Isomorphism". {p.89 Block} So, it appears that not only does Hacker think there is a theory in the Tractatus, he also thinks that it is a quite elaborate one, even though Wittgenstein says in his preface of the book, that there are no theories in the book.

Though most ignore it, Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus 4.112 "[A] philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations."

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein says that in formal logic the sense of a relationship between things cannot be shown; all that can be shown in logic is that there is a relationship between things, which means the meaning of logical propositions comes from looking at the things in the world that the proposition is symbolising, and thereby learning the sense of the relationship. If the things being symbolised in formal logic cannot be found in the world, there is no way to know their sense, which means there is no way to know what the author means when he is making his claim. In 4.03 Wittgenstein explains the differences between the logic of ordinary language and the logic of philosophy, which is formal logic, in order to show that the sense of the relationship between words in a declarative sentence can be understood only if one understands the sentence. Understanding a sentence means knowing what is the case if the sentence is true. Because formal logic cannot depict sense, since sense is revealed only by knowing the possibilities of the objects in the relationship, thus we cannot know the case of anything that cannot be depicted in language. This is what normal interpreters are talking about when they say "the picture theory". It is actually only half of a two-step process Wittgenstein describes is needed in order to discover whether claims are true or not (outside of notions of "belief" that is).

Wittgenstein did not mean for the "picture theory" to become what the classical interpreters have made it out to be, and when looking at his personal letter to C.K. Ogden it might be that the idea of pictures or images used in that part of his theory are being used as part of a pun. To quote Wittgenstein in reference to 3.001 of the Tractatus:

The German 'Wir koennen uns ein Bild von ihm machen' is a phrase commonly used. I have rendered it by 'we can imagine it' because 'imagine' comes from 'image' and this is something like picture. In German it is a sort of pun you see. {von Wright}

In his essay, Im Anfang war die Tat, Peter Winch declares:

In Tractatus, 4.0312 Wittgenstein says that his fundamental thought is that "the 'logical constants' do not represent". This reflects his concern to give an account of logical inference such that the validity of an inference should not be made to look as though it depended on an appeal to something's "being the case". {p.159 Block}

Winch continues his interpretation by latching onto the idea of logical atomism and concludes that the Tractatus can be entirely disregarded once it is shown that the theory of logical atomism has fundamental flaws in it.

I think Winch misses the main points of the Tractatus: Logical atomism was a part of book not the whole book; moreover, the part of the book where it is described, was not Wittgenstein's own theory on it; rather, he was pointing out Russell's theory step by step. Wittgenstein was not necessarily propagating logical atomism, he was only showing how if logical atomism is the best model to use in formal logic, then the consequences of it are such and such. When I read the Tractatus, I saw that it was inconsequential to the greater messages in the book, whether Wittgenstein was in agreement with logical atomism or not.

Erik Stenius states: "David Pears seems to assume that the "picture theory of sentence" meaning must be rejected as soon as logical atomism is rejected. But this is certainly not so and was certainly not the view of the later Wittgenstein." {p.112 Block} Stenius, correcting other misinterpretations of the Tractatus, wrote an essay on how Wittgenstein did not reject the picture theory in his later writing Philosophical Investigations, he says that was an assumption made first by George Pitcher and repeated by Peter Hacker and James Bogen, who are all mistaken.

Stenius is not well known for his studies and interpretations of Wittgenstein, probably because his expositions are very complex, very thorough and not the kind of study that is likely to become popular due to its complex nature. In Philosophy, as in all disciplines, it is usually the most simplistic or outrageous claims that become popular. Stenius seems (rightfully) frustrated that his hard work is not being given its due recognition:

In my book on the Tractatus I give the picture theory of sentence meaning a precise formulation. However, books on Wittgenstein written after my book show that their authors do not know what my version of the picture theory is. Either they leave it out of consideration or state it wrongly on crucial points. ... I shall now proceed to an attempt to give an account of my version of the picture theory. Not that I really believe this will be of any use. There is a strong resistance against even understanding my version of the picture theory, a resistance which may have different psychological roots. {pp.111-2 Block}

Stenius describes how there is a wide and narrow application of the picture theory that is applied differently in different kinds of sentences; each different kind of sentence that it is applied to is explained by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. Stenius seems to be suggesting that some people interpret the Tractatus too literally; that they don't look far enough into the book to really understand it.

He is probably correct, since Wittgenstein himself tells Ogden in a personal letter that the Tractatus has been translated into English too literally, but that he does not know how to correct this. (von Wright, ed. Letters to C.K. Ogden 1973 Oxford: Basil Blackwell)

Stenius takes note that classical interpreters are not careful and precise in their understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy:

Irving Copi [and] Anthony Kenny ... think ... that Wittgenstein tacitly assumes that 'aRb' ... refers to a sentence which says that a is to the left of b. But I cannot take this suggestion seriously. Nowhere in the Tractatus or the writings prior to it Wittgenstein makes such an assumption. {p.112 Block}

Erik Stenius is the only interpreter I have found, out of about a dozen, who gives a very precise summary of the logical elucidations in book, although he, like most others, ignores the preface and the ending of the book, which tell why the book was written, so even his understanding is not complete.

The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy entry on the Tractatus by Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar appears to be an accurate interpretation of the Tractatus only in the second half of its summary (which I have quoted below). The first half of their entry (which does not appear below) is the same severely over-generalized interpretation that is one of the two most popular interpretations. I don't think the Tractatus can be summarized well, because the book itself is already a summary of something much greater than itself, so to try to make it an even more simplistic summary easily falls into erroneous over-simplifications. Although it is problematic, Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar's summary is better than most, because at least it does mention the main point of the book, which most other interpretations ignore. They also do better than most because they notice that Wittgenstein not only has notions of 'sense and nonsense', but also senselessness, which is not equivalent to nonsense:

The characteristic of being senseless applies not only to the propositions of logic but also to other things that cannot be represented, such as mathematics or the pictorial form itself of the pictures that do represent. These are, like tautologies and contradictions, literally sense-less, they have no sense.

Beyond, or aside from, senseless propositions Wittgenstein identifies another group of statements which cannot carry sense: the nonsensical (unsinnig) propositions. Nonsense, as opposed to senselessness, is encountered when a proposition is even more radically devoid of meaning, when it transcends the bounds of sense. Under the label of unsinnig can be found ... "1 is a number". While some nonsensical propositions are blatantly so, others seem to be meaningful -- and only analysis ... can expose their nonsensicality. Since only what is "in" the world can be described, anything that is "higher" is excluded, including the notion of limit and the limit points themselves. Traditional metaphysics, and the propositions of ethics and aesthetics, which try to capture the world as a whole, are also excluded, as is the truth in solipsism, the very notion of a subject, for it is also not "in" the world but at its limit.

Wittgenstein does not, however, relegate all that is not inside the bounds of sense to oblivion. He makes a distinction between saying and showing which is made to do additional work. There are, beyond the senses that can be formulated in sayable (sensical) propositions, things that can only be shown. These -- the logical form of the world, the pictorial form, etc. -- show themselves in the form of (contingent) propositions, in the symbolism and logical propositions, and even in the unsayable (metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic) propositions of philosophy. "What can be shown cannot be said." But it is there, in language, even though it cannot be said.

Another interpretation which has been gaining in popularity over the past few years is the "post-modern" interpretation of the Tractatus, which I describe below, in the next section of this web page.

Besides the various interpretations listed above, there are other interpretations that never gain much attention, for example Gert-Jan Lokhorst in the Netherlands, views the Tractatus as being statements about the nature of the human soul by concentrating on declaration 5.5421. He appears to be forming some kind of Neo-Logical Positivist view of the Tractatus.

As you can see, there are a lot of different takes on the Tractatus. So who are we to believe? Who has the correct interpretation of the book? I'd say that those who do not create a "picture theory" and then claim it as the entire point of the book, in the typical and overly simplistic way that John Searle and other normal philosophers do, are more likely to have a deeper understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy, but only those who elaborate on the main point of the book, on what the entire book is leading up to, prove to truly understand the book.

I have noticed that the various interpreters often have glimpses of the profound points of the book, but the most frequent mistake they make is that they are looking for a theory, which is a misguided approach, and it ignores Wittgenstein's own words about the purpose of the book, and what it contains. There are no new theories whatsoever in the Tractatus, which Wittgenstein clearly states in his preface, but I suppose since philosophers are reading the book, they are conditioned to look for theories.

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The two most popular interpretations of the Tractatus

Most encyclopedia entries and introductions to the work of Wittgenstein first describe the Picture Theory interpretation, which is, by far, the most popular interpretation of the book, but there is another interpretation that has been growing in popularity over the past few years: the "post-modern" interpretation, and it is usually summarized in encyclopedias along with the classic variations on the Picture Theory.

From what I have gathered about the post-modern interpretations of Cora Diamond, James Conant and Alessandra Tanesini, is that they all seem to be basically the same, with only very minimal, negligable differences among them (though they all seem to think they are significantly different from each other; I suppose academic philosophers like to pretend that they have discovered something new), and they label their interpretations "post-modern", "feminist", "ethicist" or "austere". I use the term "post-modern" because by definition, it encompasses all the aforementioned labels. (I have no clue what is supposedly "feminist" about those who call their interpretations that, nor "ethicist"; neither of those terms mean anything; they are both completely empty terms, while "austere" as a descriptive term might be useful, though only minimally; it too is mostly an empty term.)

All variations of the post-modernists end up with the same essential claim: that the propositions given in the Tractatus are invalid because they violate the rules of logical syntax that the Picture Theory puts forth. The classical interpretations seem to be hinged on the Picture Theory, while the post-modern interpretation claims that the entire book is all nonsense meant to show how nonsense in Philosophy can often appear to be meaningful. (I agree that nonsense in Philosophy is often mistaken for profound theory, but the reasons that Diamond, Conant and Tanesini are claiming the Tractatus is a pile of rubbish are nowhere near accurate.)

Duncan Richter's entry on Wittgenstein in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy repeats the Picture Theory interepretation, then he describes what he sees as the problems with the Picture Theory, which are the same reasons the post-modernists use to try to nullify the classical interpretations:

Many commentators ignore or dismiss what Wittgenstein said about his work and its aims, and instead look for regular philosophical theories in his work. The most famous of these in the Tractatus is the "picture theory" of meaning. According to this theory propositions are meaningful insofar as they picture states of affairs or matters of empirical fact. Anything normative, supernatural or ... metaphysical must, it therefore seems, be nonsense. This has been an influential reading of parts of the Tractatus. Unfortunately, this reading leads to serious problems since by its own lights the Tractatus' use of words like "object," "reality" and "world" is illegitimate. These concepts are purely formal or a priori. A statement such as "There are objects in the world" does not picture a state of affairs. Rather it is, as it were, presupposed by the notion of a state of affairs. The "picture theory" therefore denies sense to just the kind of statements of which the Tractatus is composed, to the framework supporting the picture theory itself. In this way the Tractatus pulls the rug out from under its own feet.

Richter, when giving his summary of the two most popular interpretations of the Tractatus, appears to be agreeing with the post-modern interpretation, which means that he is trying to apply the erroneous Picture Theory to every statement in the book, and he is mistaking the technical term 'nonsensical' for the ordinary word 'nonsense' in elucidation #6.54.

Of the various encyclopedia entries about the Tractatus on the internet, I have found only three relatively accurate, though over-simplified interpretations: The best one is the Wikipedia entry on the Tractatus by an anonymous author. Another good one is the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on the Tractatus by Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar. The other one worth reading is PhilosophyPages.com on the Tractatus. (These links are repeated at the end of this webpage in the online articles about Wittgenstein section.)

When I read the Tractatus, I didn't see why the part in section three is what most interpreters have latched onto, calling it "the picture theory" and claiming that it is what the whole book is about (maybe because that part seems more like a theory than any other part of the book, and since philosophers are conditioned to look for theories in everything they read, they assume the book must really be all about section three). I also didn't see why most interpreters have not noticed the obvious: When Wittgenstein uses the words 'nonsense', 'nonsensical', 'senseless', 'sense' and 'sense-bearing' he means several different things; he means far more than just 'sense and nonsense' which are the only two notions of sense that most interpreters reference.

People cannot even recognize, let alone understand what they are not ready or willing to recognize. Philosophers are just ordinary people too, and generally, the people who interpret the Tractatus are not willing to admit the failures and limits of Philosophy.

Contrary to popular belief, there are no theories in the book that originate with Wittgenstein, though he does state views popular in Logic during his time, before he goes about showing their flaws and limitations. The the more skillful interpreters recognize that the book is far more than what many call "the picture theory", but I have yet to find an interpreter who elaborates sufficiently on the main point of the book in order to do justice to its aesthetic, metaphysical and ethical value.

It appears to me that the interpretations of the Tractatus that have become the most popular are the over-simplied ones that claim various takes on the "picture theory", stopping there, without going further to see the larger picture in which the "picture theory" fits, and in the worst cases, assuming that Wittgenstein was making a theory of language. The other interpretations that has gained unwarrented popularity are those who claim that the Tractatus is completely meaningless in all possible regards, except for the utilitarian value of showing how one might go about creating sentences that appear meaningful yet are not. This latter erroneous interpretation is a horrendous mistake in my opinion, much worse than the over-simplistic Picture Theory people. A close look at this latter popular interpretation appears in the next section below.

I think both of the most popular interpretations have over-simplified the Tractatus. Also, both interpretations are an insult to Russell and more who took Wittgenstein through his PhD dissertation. If the book is as simple as the two popular sets of interpreters would like to believe it is, then certainly Russell and Moore would have clearly understood it during the many times that Wittgenstein tried to explain it to them during his dissertation defence. They never did fully understand it, but the parts of it that they did understand caused them to call it a "work of genius" in their notes. At the end of his defence Wittgenstein is reported to have said to Russell and Moore: "Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it."

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Why the "post-modern" interpretation is stupid

Tanesini, like all the post-modernists, quotes the preface of the Tractatus and uses it, along with "Wittgenstein's ladder" at the end of the book, to create his interpretation. He calls himself a "feminist", again I have no clue why; and if using that word is supposed to add something to his understanding of Wittgenstein, it didn't work, I didn't see him understand Wittgenstein any more or less than most others. Anyway, Tanesini, like all the other post-modernists, ignores the contents of the book and focuses on a couple of sentences at the beginning and end of the book to create his interpretation, and in doing so, apparently they are unaware that at the end of the book, the translation they read of the German word 'unsinnig' has been incorrectly translated by Pears & McGuiness as 'unsinn', which changes the meaning of the word that they read. They continue to repeat that word "nonsense", "nonsense", "nonsense" not realizing that it is a mistranslation of the German word unsinnig, which means "nonsensical" and is a technical term in formal logic. Even so, the Ogden translation -- which has the correct translation of the word "unsinnig" at the end -- has also been greatly misunderstood, so I don't think it is simply this one technical term that is being mistaken for a vulgar word which causes the post-modernists' misunderstanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy.

Wittgenstein's preface of the Tractatus, which, along with the conclusion of the book, is currently under debate by various modern-day academic philosophers, is as follows:

The aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather -- not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e., we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.

From reading the preface above, Tanesini surmises:

Wittgenstein appears to indicate that, once we have become clear about the logic of our language, philosophical problems disappear, because it becomes apparent that they cannot be formulated meaningfully. They are simply nonsense. These passages from the preface also indicate that issues of logic and language are not the ultimate target of the Tractatus. Rather, Wittgenstein's description of the logic of language is instrumental to a further aim. This aim is: the vanishing of philosophical problems, by showing that in the attempt to formulate them, we run up against the limits of language, and end up uttering nonsense. {pp.61-2 Tanesini}

Notice in the paragraph above, that Tanesini gives his interpretation of Wittgenstein's words, then he goes on to say that Wittgenstein meant something further, which he then states, but it is only a repeat of what he just said in the first half of his paragraph. A repetition of a previous point is not a further point. This is one example of how sloppy the post-modernists are.

Tanesini describes the fundamental claim that all variations of the post-modernists start from:

[The classical interpreters] have failed to see that the lesson of the Tractatus does not consist in a series of theses about the connections between language, or thought, and reality. Rather, the lesson takes the form of a recognition that every attempt to formulate theses of this kind flounders into nonsense. Thus, Tractatus is a ladder which helps us to appreciate that so-called answers to philosophical problems are nonsense disguised as sense. Wittgenstein achieves this by carefully arranging philosophical nonsense in a way that should help us to see it for the nonsense which it is. For this reason, those who have understood Wittgenstein's lesson can throw away the Tractatus. {p.57 Tanesini}

In summary, Tanesini, like all the other "post-modernits" is using mistaken translations and ignoring the history leading up to the Tractatus as well as ignoring Wittgenstein's later comments on parts of the Tractatus, not to mention ignoring Wittgenstein's personality which is also very revealing about what he means by the elucidations in his book.

The post-modernists make the same mistake as the classicists that they are opposed to: they clutch onto a small part of the book, misunderstand it because they take it out of context and add their own agenda to it, then they pretend like that small part is the entire contents of the book.

The post-modernists never meticulously describe their claim that the "logical syntax of the propositions in the Tractatus fail to meet its own standards". Somehow this claim has gained some popularity (I really don't see how it became popular in the first place) but Peter Hacker wrote an essay that shredded the claim to dust, showing the stupidity of it, in his book: Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies {Oxford University Press, 2002} He methodically disintegrates the post-modernist's claim that the Tractatus is entirely and completely nonsense, and the main absurdity in the post-modernists' view that he points out is the fact that they claim both that the book shows how the problems of philosophy are all nonsense, yet the entire book itself is nonsense, so how can nonsense make a philosophical statement? It is a ridiculous claim, summarized by Meredith Williams' review of Hacker's book:

The internal problem with the austere reading, in general terms, lies with its fractured strategy. Strictly, the lines are gibberish and yet they must be treated as meaningful, contributing to arguments and theories in order to explain how one comes to recognize that they are gibberish. Hacker points out that Diamond cannot avoid drawing on some of the very elements and claims in her arguments that she identified as nonsense in her conclusions. The Tractatus becomes a gnostic text. This apparent incoherence makes the debate concerning the early Wittgenstein's relation to Frege critical, for Diamond holds that the argumentative work is done by way of Frege's context principle and not by way of any thesis within the Tractatus. This too Hacker disputes.

Hacker's external objections are presented in a thorough and convincing manner. Wittgenstein's notebooks, correspondence and lectures both before and after the completion of the Tractatus press strongly against the austere reading. To make these many sources consistent with the austere reading requires a massive hermeneutic reinterpretation. This cannot but involve attributing something very close to dissembling to Wittgenstein in his manuscripts and correspondence. It is difficult to see how, for example, the austere reader can accommodate the argument of Wittgenstein's 1929 paper Some Remarks on Logical Form since that paper addresses the color-exclusion problem, using it to challenge the Tractatus thesis that elementary propositions are semantically and logically independent of each other. If Wittgenstein did not endorse the theories that make the independence thesis necessary, just what is he doing in this paper and in other of his philosophical writings that purport to criticize or otherwise repudiate the claims of the Tractatus? {Read William's entire book review here.}

The problem with Cora Diamond, James Conant and other "feminists", "ethicists" "post-modernists" or whatever other pointless words they'd like to call themselves, is that they are starting their critique using "the picture theory", which is already in error itself because there really is no Picture Theory per se, not to mention that there are a variety of theories on what the "picture theory" supposedly is; so if they want to start with this theory, they would have to start with all intepretations of it in order to make their case, but they only use one theory of the Picture Theory to start their diatribe. There is some discussion in the Tractatus on how we know what someone means when they say a sentence, by picturing what they are saying, but that is only a part of a much larger declaration Wittgenstein makes about what needs to occur in order for meaning to be derived from sentences, and how negative meaning occurs (statements about what is not the case).

The post-modernists take an erroneous interpretation of the book, apply it to the propositions in the Tractatus; then say that the sentences in the book do no show pictures of the world, therefore they must be rubbish, claiming that Wittgenstein says so at the end. They misunderstood him. Besides the Picture Theory being a flawed starting point, Wittgenstein did not say the word "nonsense" at the end: he said the word "nonsensical", which is a technical term used in formal logic, as opposed to the word "nonsense", which is a word used in the vernacular. (There are other technical terms in formal logic that are used as vulgar words in common culture, such as "reckon" and "perversion".)

Here is the ending of the book (6.54-7) that is under debate:

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

What Wittgenstein says above is that since the subject matter of the book, formal logic, is irrelevant to all that is important in life, we need not concern ourselves with the petty problems of formal logic, but instead, look towards what is really important in life, which formal logic cannot touch because logic can only say 'what is'; logic cannot discover how and why things are what they are; that is the limit of logic: To declare what is the case, without speculation, without moral or aesthetic consideration of what is the case. His word 'nonsensical' above is not equivalent to the word 'nonsense', although he explains throughout the book how a sentence in formal logic that is nonsensical, as in, it is unable to show exactly how the objects it represents have a relationship to each other, can become nonsense, as in rubbish, if there is not another way to understand the meaning of the logical proposition beyond merely the words themselves.

All throughout the Tractatus he explains how nonsensical statements in logic, may or may not decay into meaningless nonsense if secondary conditions to ascertain meaning from the statements is not fulfilled. 'Nonsense' does not automatically follow from formally 'nonsensical' in Wittgenstein's explanation all throughout the book, and that is why I recognize what he means in 6.54, because I have not forgotten what he says through the entire book leading up to 6.54. The post-modernists ignore the content of the book, which makes them easily misunderstand the word "nonsensical" at the end; they don't recognize it as a technical term; they see it as an ordinary word.

But this is not all that Wittgenstein is saying at the end of his book: he is also saying that only those who can understand what he is saying about logic in the book, will also understand his ultimate message to logicians and philosphers, because of the fact that he can only say how things are; because he is limited by his own language of logic; therefore, only those who can see beyond the factuality of his logical propositions will be able to recognize what he means to say but cannot say using the limited language. He shows, but does not say, the point of the book.

Another thing to consider is that in the above translation, by Pears & McGuiness, in trying to modernize the language, they have actually changed the meaning of the last sentence in the book, which originally said: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof on must remain silent." The original translation shows a different sense than the modernized version. In the modern version, an action takes place, one "passes over" something; giving the impression that what is being passed over is rubbish. The modern translation lends itself more easily to errors, while the Ogden translation is more accurate in this instance because it gives the impression of standing still; not of doing an act, but of standing still and being immersed in, or observing; of remaining present while not speaking. This is very different from the modern translation which implies walking away from something. Wittgenstein was not advocating walking away from all that cannot be discussed by the limited language of Philosophy; he was adocating an immersion into as well as a witnessing of all that cannot be contained in formal logic. For Wittgenstein, logic and philosophy contaminate the purity of the aesthetic parts of life. For example, picking apart a score of music and trying to declare parts of it in isolation having 'meaning' (a very vague concept which Philosophy has never been able to define very well) or claiming parts of it have more value or over other parts, etc. It becomes ridiculous to philosophize about music rather than immerse onself into the experience and thereby absorb and respond to its inarticulable meaning and value, which is always individual, and can never be a universal the way that Philosophy so often claims that aesthetic values are.

In case the reader is not convinced that we have enough reasons to call the post-modernists "stupid" (I love how the German logician Dietrich Doerner uses this word in discussing parts of his logic; he likes to say how things are, rather than pussy-footing around, trying to be so nauseatingly polite the way that so many boring modern-day philosphers do. It is a weakness of character to try to make sure one lives one's life without ever offending anyone; this is the decay of today's Philosophy.) I will give another reason why the post-modernists are mistaken in their interpretation: Peter Hacker discusses what Wittgenstein keeps from the Tractatus and brings into his later philosophy. {p.99 Block} It appears that the post-modern interpreters have over-looked the fact that Wittgenstein sometimes referenced very specific things in the Tractatus years later in his lectures at Cambridge, as confirmed by G.E. Moore, {Philsophical Papers. New York: Macmillan Company, 1966} and in doing so, he further developed certain elucidations from the Tractatus, so that they became more clear, or more refined. He also referenced specific statements in the book years later, saying that they were mistakes. (The statements on Logical Atomism were mistakes because he no longer subscribed to Russell's epistemology in his later work, and the fact that he thought he could solve all of the problems in Philosophy by going in one direction (up a ladder) rather than going criss-cross into several directions at once, which is what he does in his later philosophy, are the two main things Wittgenstein rejected about his early work.) Why would Wittgenstein have made these references to the Tractatus years later during serious discussions with other philosophers, if it was after all, full of seven years of writing mere nonsense? The post-modern interpretations seem to have not taken this fact into account either, along with not taking into account the history leading up to the writing of the book, which also shows that the book is not a big joke like the post-modernists claim it is.

Embedded within his diatribe against the classical interpreters, Tanesini claims that the primary concern of the Tractatus is subjectivity. {p.59} I don't know why or how he draws that conclusion while simultaneously claiming that the Tractatus is a grandiose jest. Overall, Diamond, Conant, Tanesini, et. al. give very weak, very inconsistent, even self-contradictory claims that the Tractatus is a joke meant to be burned by those who "get the joke". Instead of burning the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I really think we ought to burn the post-modernists (using their books as fire-starters) because the Tractatus is far more useful, profound, and aesthetically pleasing that the stupid post-modernists.

In case the reader is still not convinced of the stupidity of the post-modernists, here is one more thing to consider against the interpreters who claim that the Tractatus is entirely nonsense, with no theory at all: We can see that the Tractatus is not nonsense according to Wittgenstein's and Russell's personal letters to each other. By looking at their personal letters, we see that the book was an attempt to solve certain logical problems in Russell's epistemological theory. During the time that Wittgenstein was writing the Tractatus he was generally in a loose agreement with Russell's epistemology, but he was also in strong disagreement with parts of Russell's and Frege's theories. Russell had been at work trying to design a kind of formal logic that used signifiers to show the sense of the relations of objects in logical propositions. Also, Wittgenstein was in lengthy discussion with Ramsey and Ogden about the book, as he was painstakingly making corrections to the first publication which had numerous errors of translation in it. It is hard to believe that he would have put so much time into it if it was all just nonsense. Also, because at the time Wittgenstein was writing the Tractatus he considered anything a waste of time that was not either enjoying the great works created by others, or creating one's own great works. I don't think he would be writing a book of utter nonsense in the vulgar definition of the word, with such an opinion of how one should spend one's time, especially given that this opinion Wittgenstein had was apparently a fierce one, as evidenced by what Russell wrote in a personal letter to Lady Ottoline on 9 Nov. 1912 when he was telling his about when Wittgenstein and he went out to watch North Whitehead's boat race:

[Wittgenstein] "suddenly stood still and explained that the way we had spent the afternoon was so vile that we ought not to live, or at least he ought not, that nothing is tolerable except producing great works or enjoying those of others, that he has accomplished nothing and never will, etc. - all this with a force that nearly knocks one down." {p.9 Block}

During the time Wittgenstein began criticizing fundamental parts of Russell's theory, Russell and Whitehead were working on a treatise in 1912 to address the following problem:

"Physics exhibits sensations as functions of physical objects. But epistemology demands that physical objects should be exhibited as functions of sensations. Thus we have to solve the equations giving sensations in terms of physical objects, so as to make them give physical objects in terms of sensations. That is all." {p.13 Block}

In 1911 Bertrand Russell published The Problems of Philosophy, the same year that he met Wittgenstein. In Russell's book he "had promoted the concept of the 'sense' of the subordinate relation in belief statements to being a characteristic of the multiple judging relation. ... He [also] thought he had to admit that relations have being, and the case for qualities appeared almost as strong." {p.18 Block}

Wittgenstein said to von Fickler in personal letter:

[T]he book's point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which is not in fact there now but which I will write out for you here, because it will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I meant to write then, was this: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. For the ethical gets its limit drawn from the inside, as it were, by my book; and I am convinced tht this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing that limit. In short, I believe that where many others today are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it. ... For now I would recommend you to read the preface and the conclusion, for they contain the most direct expression of the point. {p.16 ProtoTractatus}

Tanesini notes that Wittgenstein's letter to von Fickler has been ignored by classical interpreters because they see it as being in opposition to the existing preface of the book {p.56}, but I don't see where the opposition is; his letter to von Ficker in no way goes against anything that he already said in the preface and conclusion of his book. The letter has indeed been ignored by classical interpeters, but referencing Wittgenstein's letter to von Fickler does not strengthen the post-modernists case against the classicists.

He seems to be doing the same thing other "post-modern" interpreters do, which is to start their criticism by showing that the "picture theory", when applied to all the sentences in the Tractatus, does not hold, and therefore, all the sentences in the Tractatus are nonsense, as in meaningless, because they do not picture states of affairs. This approach is severely misguided, much worse than those who claim that the entire book is about a "picture theory" and nothing else.

Tanesini thinks that the ending of the Tractatus has "self-destructive" remarks {p.57}:

[T]raditional commentators are ... well aware of the presence of these self-destructive remarks at the end of Wittgenstein's book. Some choose to ignore them. Thus, Peter Carruthers writes that "the doctrine of philosophy as nonsense may simply be excised from [the book] without damage to the remainder." (1990, p.5)

I don't think the end of the book undermines anything that the book set out to do, which was to show the failings and limits of both formal logic and ordinary language. Whenever the conclusion of the Tractatus is ignored, I think it is because it is not understood (people tend to ignore things they don't understand; even philosophers have this bad habit).

I believe that it is necessary to study the history leading up to the writing of the book as well as taking a close look at Wittgenstein's personality in order to understand his cryptic style of writing. It is evident that the post-modernists have not done this. If they had, they would have noticed the following things:

Wittgenstein had many long discussions with Russell about what logic can and cannot do.

Wittgenstein retreated in isolation for months at a time so that he could work on solving the problems of formal logic and these writings over a seven-year period, which became the Tractatus

Wittgenstein had no interest in doing anything else except creating great works, or enjoying the great works of others, he told Russell during the time he was writing the Tractatus

If the Tractatus was meant to be a dismissable joke, Russell and Moore would have understood that in Wittgenstein's dissertation examination while he was explaining to them the meaning of the book.

'Nonsensical' is a technical term Wittgenstein uses in formal logic, while he also uses the term 'nonsense' in its vulgar meaning; these words have very different meanings, and must be understood independently in each occurence in the Tractatus, even though nonsensical leads to nonsense.

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Why the Tractatus is easily and often misunderstood

The most common error all sets of interpreters make is that they don't take the book as a whole; they ignore major parts of it, and the second most common mistake they make is that they do not understand Wittgenstein's preface and ending of the book.

Of the dozen or so interpreters of the Tractatus that I've read, who all hold professorships at prestigious universities, and are therefore expected to be the world's best interpreters of obscure philosophy, I found only one (unknown) philosopher who has noticed the utmost crucial thing about Wittgenstein that one must notice in order to ever be able to understand any of his philosophy. That is, his diachronic use of words; his way of saying more than one statement at once on more than one parallel level. This is not an unusual trait of complex philosophers. This philosophical trait predates Heraclitus of Ephesus, famous for his short, one-line philosophical statements that contain profound multiple-meanings in his conservative use of words.

I did not expect that my research into the Tractatus would turn out to be a revelation on the inadequacy of the field of Philosophy as a whole, yet as it turns out, the only thing I learned from most of the interpreters of the TTT, is that there are a lot of idiots who have PhDs. I always knew that there are some incompetent people who hold PhDs (mostly Americans, since it is so easy to get a PhD in the US; any idiot in the US who can follow instructions can buy a PhD; it's all about money in the US; not about high-level scholarship) but now I have discovered that there are far more idiots in the world with PhDs than I had ever suspected, and they are not only in America, but are all around the world.

Perhaps because Wittgenstein was writing during a period of history known for its excessive, prolific use of words when making philosophical statements, which continues today, interpreters assume that he is like the others during his time period, who said only one thing at a time in each of their statements. Philosophers, like the common people that they are, often think that things can only be one way, not many ways at once. This narrow-mindedness is also very pravalent in the modern sciences.

When I read the Tractatus, one of the first things I noticed is that the concept of 'sense' and all its variations is one of the most important themes in the Tractatus, and should be paid close attention to in order to fully understand the book. Here follows a list of the variations of the root-word 'sense' that appear in the Tractatus, some of which have been incorrectly translated by both Ogden and Pears & McGuiness:

Nonsense (unsinn) appears in five instances: the foreward, 5.5303, 5.5351, 5.5422, 5.5571
Nonsensical (unsinnig) appears in ten instances: 3.24, 4.003, 4.124, 4.1272, 4.1274, 4.4611, 5.473, 5.5351, 6.51, 6.54
Nonsensicality (unsinnigkeit) appears in 4.003
Sense (sinn) appears in fifty-two instances: foreward (the sense of the Tractatus summed up in two statements) 2.0211, 2.221, 2.222, 3.11, 3.13, 3.142, 3.1431, 3.144, 3.23, 3.3, 3.31, 3.328 (sense of Occam's Razor explained) 3.34, 3.341, 4.002, 4.011, 4.02, 4.021, 4.022, 4.027, 4.03, 4.031, 4.032, 4.061, 4.0621, 4.063, 4.064, 4.1211, 4.1221, 4.1241, 4.2, 4.431, 4.465, 4.5, 5.122, 5.2341, 5.25, 5.42, 5.46, 5.4732, 5.4733, 5.514, 5.515, 5.5302, 5.5542, 6.124, 6.126, 6.232 (Frege's distinction between meaning and sense) 6.41, 6.422, 6.521
Sense-bearing (sinnvoll) appears nine times: 3.313, 3.4, 3.326, 4., 5.1241, 5.525, 6.1263, 6.1264, 6.31.
Senseless (sinnlos) appears in four instances: 4.461, 5.132, 5.1362, 5.5351
Sensible (sinnlich) appears in 3.32
Sensibly (sinnlich) appears in 3.1 and 3.11, and is a pun, according to George Plochmann {p.166} because it not only refers at once to the five senses, but also refers back to the other previous meanings of the word in sections 1 and 2 of the book.

Plochmann takes note of the variations in meaning that the word 'sense' has in the Tractatus:

There can be no doubt of the translation of this term, which in both its German and English dress permits Wittgenstein, by a kind of punning, to attribute "sense", "significance", to a proposition, and to liken the proposition to an arrow pointing, like a vector, toward a recognizable state of affairs. {p.162}

Plochmann also notes that the German word 'sinvoll' cannot be translated into English; it means 'sense-bearing' but is often translated as 'significant':

English lacks an adjective to indicate that something has sense of the kind Wittgenstein intends. "Sensitive", "sensive", "sensible", "sensate", lead off in other directions. Our translation is awkward, but so is any neologism like "sensical". "Significant" does not make clear the textual connections of the word. {p.165}

In the preface of his book, George Plochmann discusses Wittgenstein's diachronic use of words and of the difficulty of translating the text:

[T]he fine-cut distinctions, strange vocabulary, and subtle variations of terminology in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus are of a sort that bring not only the occasional but also the determined and well-prepared reader to desperation. ... [M]any of his important terms, those most characteristically his, are extremely difficult to put into English, either because the German seems not to possess any precise equivalent in the latter language (as with Gegenstand, ordinarily translated as object, but which has a special twist, as being something standing over against), or because Wittgenstein himself placed these terms in rather unusual contexts, altering what they ordinarily mean, even making them appear ambiguous. We have in mind such words as Sachlage, commonly rendered state of affairs ... though this disconnects the word from Sache, entity, another word used for object or thing. Wittgenstein had obviously intended his two words to belong together; though they are not synonymous, their common root must somehow be brought out. Then again there is Sachverhalt, usually translated atomic fact, though a Sachverhalt is not really always existent as a fact would have to be: there can be a negative Sachverhalt. Moreover, -verhalt in this word has a meaning of relationship completely neglected in atomic fact. Lastly, atomic fact and state of affairs and object seem much farther apart in English than Sachverhalt, Sachlage, and Sache. Had Wittgenstein himself wished to separate these three notions, he could have found plenty of German words to hand. {pp.v-vii Plochmann}

What Stephen Buckle says about erroneous popular readings of Hume, applies to Wittgenstein as well:

[T]here is considerably more art in Hume's comments ... than may meet the (modern) eye, and bringing it to the fore immediately gives a somewhat more complex impression. ...[T]he popular reading [of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding] ... is well astray, and ... quite the opposite of Hume's intention. .... Orthodoxies often flourish unconstrained by their inconsistencies. ... [T]here is little good reason for not taking Hume at his word ... [in his discussion of the book in his autobiography]." {p.8-9 Buckle}

We should do not do what the classical interpreters have done: Ignore what Wittgenstein says in the preface and the ending of his book, but we should also not do what the post-modern interpreters have done: Ignore the entire book except for the preface and the ending, while reading an incorrect translation of the words no less!

Anything that has the capacity to become popular, is necessarily an over-simplification; otherwise it would not appeal to general masses of philosophers. Nothing too complex ever becomes popular, this holds true in Philosophy as well as in culture as a whole, time and time again.

In the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Wittgenstein Duncan Richter shows that he is having difficulty understanding Wittgenstein's philosophy. He seems to be reading the book in the usual, common way; looking for a theory, and mistaking the technical term 'nonsensical' for the vulgar term 'nonsense'. Richter says "Wittgenstein told Ludwig von Ficker that the point of the Tractatus was ethical. ... [but] the book certainly does not seem to be about ethics."

In his encyclopedia entry, it appears that Richter catches some small glimpses of what Wittgenstein means in his philosophy, but he does not catch the bigger picture drawn by the book and he is completely oblivious to Wittgenstein's frequent diachronic use of words, which means Richter only skims the surface of Wittgenstein's philosophy, and in doing so, misunderstands major parts of it. He stated that he does not see how the Tractatus is about ethics. This confession reveals that he, like most interpreters are not of the type of mind required to understand Wittgenstein. One cannot really understand a philosopher unless one can think like that philosopher.

There is a much more accurate overview of the meaning of the Tractatus online, found in the Wikipedia on the Tractatus, wherein the anonymous author says exactly the opposite of what Richter says: "Wittgenstein does imply that those things to be passed over 'in silence' may be important or useful, according to some of his more cryptic propositions in the last sections of the Tractatus: indeed, may be the most important and most useful." The Wikipedia entry unfortunately also mentions the post-modern interpretation as if it were a legitimate interpretation. This shows that a lot of interpreters are having difficulty in refuting the post-modern interpretation, strangely, since it is not difficult to refute, which Hacker has done thoroughly in his book: Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies

The mistake the "picture theory" interpreters make is that they stop there; they don't go beyond seeing that Wittgenstein describes how visual structures in the mind to show how we naturally distinguish between what might be true and what might be false.

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My own interpretation of the Tractatus

I am aware that throughout this essay I have been quite arrogant in my claim that I understand what Wittgenstein says in his words and of that which he shows beyond his words: The greater message that his words point towards, but are unable to state directly (which is why he kept silent on the most important thing about his book, and created the entire book in order to point towards that most important thing).

Though I am confident that I understand Wittgenstein's philosophy more than those who have given interpretations so over-simplified that they distort what Wittgenstein actually says, I do not claim that I understand everything in the Tractatus. I do not have enough background in formal logic to comprehend every point in detail as it leads up to his conclusion about Logic; but of what I am capable of gathering, I can say without hesitation, that I understand enough of the Tractatus to clearly see the main point of the book, which I happen to agree with.

The main reason I can understand Wittgenstein is not because I've studied a little formal logic and a little academic philosophy, but because I am a reincarnation of Wittgenstein. This need not be taken literally. It means I have the same kind of heart and soul that he had, and I think in a similar way, which means I can understand him in ways that normal people cannot. Most philosophers are normal, they may have a few quirks, but they still basically share the same values, beliefs and inclinations as the general mass populous. Normal people have a difficult time understanding Wittgenstein's philosophy because they approach it from a normal view, looking for normal things, like words being used on only one level in each instance, or the development of theories that can be applied to something. When the normal interpreters look for normal things about Wittgenstein, they end up "forcing" his text to say things it does not really say at all, because they have great difficulty thinking about philosophy and about the world the way that Wittgenstein did.

People cannot understand things unless they recognize them from their own life experience, or unless the things are presented in a way that allows the normal person to process the new data into their familiar system of cognition. Wittgenstein could not, and seemed to have no interest in, presenting his philosophy in a way that is easily understood by normal people, so that normal philosophers with their normal ideas and beliefs about the world and everything in it would be capable of understanding him. He was writing only for a select few, which he states clearly in the preface of the Tractatus. I'm glad that he did not try to make his philosophy accomodative to the normal mindset, because if he had done that, the subtleties and parallel meanings of his words would have been lost, because these are precisely the parts of Wittgenstein's writing that slip right past the normal mind.

Here is a summary of the points I have found in the Tractatus:

All claims of truth on things that are not verifiable by empirical evidence are nonsense; if there is no way to determine the truth or falsity of a claim, it does not belong in Philosophy. All claims on things that lie outside the actual world (the empirically verifiable world) are nonsense: We cannot know the truth about things that we cannot find evidence of in the world; all else is speculation, and does not belong in Philosophy which uses logic as its language of discourse.

A priori claims of truth do not belong in logic. Claims of truth that are unverifiable by empirical evidence are nonsensical (meaning that their logical constants cannot show how the claim is actually connected logically to what the proposition claims it is connected to) because logic is a posteriori, which means it cannot verify anything that came before it.

Logic is man-made; it comes from the world; it is not beyond the world. Logic is capable only of saying what is the case, nothing else.

The aesthetic, mystical and ethical cannot be discussed as if they are facts that can be verified by observing where and how they occur in the world. Therefore, they do not belong in Philosophy.

Wittgenstein's explanantion of what formal logic would have to be capable of in order to be used the way it is being used in philosophy; shows that philosophy is incapable of discussing many things it attempts to discuss.

There are two kinds of sentences for Wittgenstein: those that say something, and those that show something: the former is the only legitimate kind of sentence to use in logic and philosophy.

Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus that the understanding of a sentence comes from knowing its sense, and sense comes from knowing all the possibilities of relationship between objects, which is learned through empirical experience. Therefore, the things that Philosophy claims are true can be true only if they are both logically true and found to be true by verifying the sense of the relationship between the objects being discussed. If one cannot do that, then the claim is nonsensical, meaning, there is no way to know what the author of the claim really means to say when it is not possible to discover through empirical experience the sense of the words that the author is using.

Logic is the language Philosophy uses to discover the truth value of its declarations (truth value means whether a proposition, a claim, is true or false according to a set of rules tht does not take into account the content of the constituents of the proposition; only its structure, its form, is evaluated) and because Logic cannot show whether a claim is true or false beyond its simply following correct logical form, Logic and Philosophy which uses Logic as its language, cannot possibly discover the actual truth of declarations about things that are outside of the world, because for Wittgenstein, real truth has two parts: logically true and empirically true.

The "picture theory", no matter its interpretation, is not the main point of the book that many interpreters have made it out to be. It is only part of the more important points of the book. Moreover, it does not matter if Wittgenstein's "picture theory" is flawed or not, because there are enough truths in it that it was able to accomplish its purpose, which was to show logicians that their logics are flawed and they are attempting to force formal logic to do something that it is incapable of doing.

The book describes what the limits of logical language are, both formal and ordinary logical languages, and says that Philosophy is mistaken to create theories, because logic cannot create theories; it can only say how things are.

The book tells philosophers that they should keep quiet about things they are incapable of discussing using the language of philosophy, which is formal logic (this means all philosophical theories have to obey the rules of formal logic in order to be deemed true, but they also have to be empirically-testable or known to be possible. The first is easy, the second is not, and is the limit of philosophy).

The Tractatus is speaking directly to philosophers, not to the general public. Wittgenstein is trying to tell philosophers, who use formal logic as their primary language to test the truth-value of the propositions leading up to the conclusions of their theories, that they are mistaken to attempt to use the limited language of formal logic to discuss things which are not found in the world; that is, things that cannot be verified by empirical evidence of their truth value.

The book tells philosophers that their task is only to clarify thoughts or to describe what IS; nothing else. So, philosophers should not to attempt a theory on HOW things are what they are; that is the task of Science, and it tells philosophers that should not attempt to theorize on WHY things are what they are; that is the task of Psychology. Wittgenstein was of the opinion that hypotheses do not belong in Philosophy.

The main point of the Tractatus, which all the above points are leading up to, is something Wittgenstein declared not only in the Tractatus, but continued declaring repetitively throughout his career until his death, is that Philosophy is using logic and language illegitimately when it theorizes on what cannot be empirically verified for truth value.

Wittgenstein explains in the Tractatus that simply using formal logic to verify the truth of a declaration is not enough; that we must also verify the truth of that declaration using empirical evidence; both are needed in order for a truth to be a real truth; otherwise it is only a logical truth, and that is inadequate for the job of Philosophy according to Wittgenstein. For him, Philosophy has one job: to say how things are; to elucidate truths, that's all. Anything that we can say is true using both criteria, formal logic and empirical evidence, is indeed true, therefore only that which can be found in the world can be called true. This is why Wittgenstein says (towards the end of his book) that there is no value in the world, therefore Philosophy should not make value statements as if they are ultimate truths (ultimate truths for Wittgenstein are those that are both logical truths as well as verifiable by empirical observation and experience) because we cannot go out into the world, pick up a piece of value as if it were a stone, bring it into the room and point at it so that all the philosophers can see it, then declare it as truth. It does not make logical sense to even think in those terms; yet this is what philososphers do with language on a daily basis, century after century. Value is created individually through social custom, conditionings, etc., and varies from person to person, culture to culture.

Sense is found in words, and gives them their meaning; therefore sense comes after understanding. According to Wittgenstein, we first understand the words in a sentence, then we acquire their sense through their use in the sentence, and therefrom in combination, meaning is derived.

Bertrand Russell loved Wittgenstein for a short time, but after a few years even Russell could not withstand Wittgenstein's natural intensity, intolerance for dishonesty, outbursts of extreme frustration, and his undying need to find the truth in as many forms as he possibly could. Wittgenstein wanted Russell to be completely honest with him, but Russell was incapable, so Wittgenstein ended their friendship. (This is what I have gathered from reading Blackwell's essay on the personal letters that Russell wrote to Lady Ottoline about Wittgenstein.) At one point, while Russell and Wittgenstein were still early in their friendship (before it went to Hell), Russell told Lady Ottoline on 9 October 1913: "Wittgenstein makes me feel it is worth while I should exist, because no one else could understand him or make the world understand him." (p.25 Block)

For example, in his Letters to C.K. Ogden {p.37 von Wright} Wittgenstein says about eludication 6.522: "the mystical element", this is the same case as in 6.44 but not the same as in 6.45. He said that in 6.44 he means it as a noun, while in 6.45 he means it as an adjective.

In elucidation #5.62 I think Wittgenstein is making reference to Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea. Wittgenstein knows what Schopenhaur means to say, he understands Schopenhauer, but Schopenhauer is illegitimately using logic, because the logical sense of his words cannot be put into the formal language; they can only be understood by those who can go beyond Schopenhauer's words, into his mind, to understand what he is saying: And this can be done only by those who already think in the same way, and are only recognizing their own thoughts written by others. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein both state this in prefaces of their books. Wittgenstein states this also at the end of his book when he describes how only those who really understand what he is saying, by going beyond what the words say, into what the words show, will be able to use his words as a ladder to transcend the concerns of the book, and thereby enter into a higher realm of consciousness where the most important things in life are found; things which cannot be captured by the language of logic.

Only when a person already knows the truth, can s/he recognize it when s/he sees it. Most philosophers don't know that most of the problems in Philosophy are illusions; they are not problems at all, they only appear to be problems because they are trying to force Philosophy to accomplish something that it is incapable of; that is, discovering truths that lie outside the realm of what is verifiable by the senses. Most philosophers view their job as one of creating plausible theories and explaining the "truths" therein, as verified by formal logic; not by empirical data. Alan Watts once remarked that if they could get away with it, philosophers would wear white lab coats to work everyday and pretend that they are scientists discovering great empirical truths.

For Wittgenstein, philosophy is an act, a method of clarification and elucidation on what is. It is not a way to create something new; it is a way to understand very deeply what already is; for him, it was a kind of therapeutic method of dissolving problems, not by solving the problems, but by understanding very clearly and deeply where the problems originate and how they became problems; which results in the dissolution of problems. Philosophical problems are not solved, but are dissolved using Wittgenstein's method of eludication. Wittgenstein, from the Tractatus all the way to the end of his life, held very strongly that Philosophy should not try to pretend it is a science. That is, Philosophy should not claim truths about things for which it has no way of verifying the truth value of the propositions in its claims. Philosophy, in Wittgenstein's mind, should abandon its efforts of trying to theorize on what cannot be empirically verified. His opinion was that most of the problems found in Philosophy and Psychology are problems in the ways people think about things. The language used in Philosophy and Psychology is a distortion of what is, rather than a clarification of what is.

In order to understand Wittgenstein's philosophy, it is crucial to recognize how he uses the same word with different meanings in different parts of the Tractatus. He is not equivocating words, it is not an accident; it is intentional, because he is giving more than one layer of meaning at once to certain statements in the book.

Of the many essays in Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein {Block, Irving, ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981} only one, by Frank Cioffi, notices that Wittgenstein means more than one thing at a time on different levels of his philosophical analyses of phenomena. Cioffi states:

Wittgenstein seems to mean two (at least) distinct things by his claim that it was a mistake for Frazer to see the phenomenon of the Fire-festivals as calling for a(n) historical reconstruction of the original sacrificial rituals of which they were mitigated survivals. He means that many of the Fire-festivals are intelligible as they stand, that in their details, or in the demeanour of their participants, they directly manifest their "inner character", their relation to the idea of the sacrificial burning of a man. They strike us as commemorations or dramatizations of this idea independently of any empirical evidence that they originated in such an event. But Wittgenstein has another more radical objection to Frazer's dealings with the Fire-festivals than his failure to see that that festivals themselves evince a sacrificial significance independently of empirical evidence as to their origins. It is his failure to see that what was called for by the "deep and sinister" character of the festivals was an account of "the experience in ourselves from which we impute" this "deep and sinister character" and of "what it is which brings this picture into connection with our own feelings and thoughts".{p.213 Block}

Frank Ramsey, in his personal discussions with Wittgenstein about the Tractatus, gives his account of what Wittgenstein told him about the book:

His idea of his book is not that anyone by reading it will understand his ideas, but that some day someone will think then out again for himself, and will derive great pleasure from finding in this book their exact expressions. ... It's terrible when he says "Is that clear" and I say "no" and he says "Damn it's horrid to go through that again". ... Some of his sentences are intentionally ambiguous having an ordinary meaning and a more difficult meaning which he also believes. {p.78 von Wright}

My conclusions about Wittgenstein's work could be better elaborated, I'm sure, nevertheless, I hope that the main contribution I've made to the understanding of Wittgenstein's work will be taken up and carried out further by those who have more time and greater skill than I have. The closing words I have for my reader are the echo of what Wittgenstein said about his own work:

If this work has any value, it consists in two things: the first is that thoughts are expressed in it, and on this score the better the thoughts are expressed -- the more the nail has been hit on the head -- the greater will be its value. -- Here I am conscious of having fallen a long way short of what is possible. Simply because my powers are too slight for the accomplishment of the task. -- May others come and do it better.

On the other hand the truth of the thoughts that are here communicated seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. And if I am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the value of this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved. {preface, Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus}

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The seven main propositions of the Tractatus

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus contains the following seven main propositions, but they are not meant to stand alone (until after the reader fully understands the book in its entirety). Each proposition has dozens of elucidations which explain its meaning in detail, each numbered by decimal expansions so that, e.g., paragraph 1.1 is a further elaboration on proposition 1, 1.22 is an elaboration of 1.2, and so on.

The seven main propositions are:*

1. The world is everything that is the case.

The world is all that is the case.

2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

What is the case -- a fact -- is the existence of states of affairs.

3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

A logical picture of facts is a thought.

4. The thought is the significant proposition.

A thought is a proposition with sense.

5. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.
(An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.)

A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
(An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.)

6. The general form of truth-function is [, , N()].
This is the general form of proposition.

The general form of a truth-function is [, , N()].
This is the general form of a proposition.

7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

*The first line of each number is the Ogden translation. The second, italicised, is the Pears & McGuinness translation.

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Bibliography

{ 1 } Aarts, Denison, Keizer, Popova, eds. Fuzzy Grammar. (Oxford: University Press, 2004) Click here to buy the book!

{ 2 } Editor: Block, Irving. Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981) Click here to buy the book!

{ 3 } Buckle, Stephen. Hume's Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001) Click here to buy the book!

{ 4 } Hacker, Peter. Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies. (Oxford University Press, 2002) Click here to buy the book!

{ 5 } Kenny, Anthony; editor. The Wittgenstein Reader. (Blackwell Publishers, 1994) Click here to buy the book!

{ 6 } Malcolm, Norman. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. (Oxford University Press, 2001) Click here to buy the book!

{ 7 } Plochmann, George Kimball & Lawson, Jack B. Terms in Their Propositional Contexts in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. (Southern Illinois University Press, 1962) Click here to buy the book!

{ 8 } Stenius, Erik. Wittgenstein's Tractatus : A Critical Exposition of its Main Lines on Thought. (Greenwood Press, 1982) Click here to buy the book!

{ 9 } Tanesini, Alessandra. Wittgenstein: A Feminist Interpretation . (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004) Click here to buy the book!

{ 10 } Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (original German text with English translation by Ogden) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1922, 1981. Click here to buy the book!

{ 11 } Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (translation into English by Ogden) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. (Dover Publications, 1999) Click here to buy the book!

{ 12 } Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (translation into English by Pears & McGuiness) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961, 2001) Click here to buy the book!

{ 13 } Wittgenstein, Ludwig; edited by G.H. von Wright. Letters to C.K. Ogden. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983) p. 24 Click here to buy the book!

{ 14 } Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, With a Revised English Translation. (Blackwell Publishers, 2002) Click here to buy the book!

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Online articles about Wittgenstein

Listed in the order of best to worst:

Wikipedia on Wittgenstein

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Wittgenstein

PhilosophyPages.com on Wittgenstein's Tractatus

Gert-Jan Lokhorst in Netherlands

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Tractatus

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