Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus E-Book

Ludwig Wittgenstein

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 108

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a profound investigation into the relationship between language, thought, and reality, formulated from a rigorously logical perspective. Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed that the structure of language mirrors the structure of the world, establishing the limits of what can be meaningfully said and what must remain in silence. Through its numbered propositions, he explored logic as the foundation of meaning, arguing that philosophy does not create theories but clarifies thoughts, delineating the ineffable. Since its publication, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has been recognized as one of the most influential works of twentieth-century philosophy, especially in the philosophy of language and analytical logic. Its unique approach to the relationship between language and the world deeply influenced schools such as logical positivism and paved the way for new philosophical paradigms, including Wittgenstein's later reflections. The enduring relevance of the work lies in its ability to provoke a radical re-evaluation of the limits of thought, what can be logically expressed, and the necessary silence before the unsayable. By investigating the essence of language and its connection with reality, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus invites readers to reconsider philosophy not as theory, but as a clarifying activity, marking a revolution in the understanding of philosophical problems.  

Leseprobe

Ludwig Wittgenstein

TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

TRATACTUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

INTRODUCTION

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1889 – 1951

Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher, widely recognized as one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Born in Vienna, in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, Wittgenstein is known for his profound contributions to the philosophy of language, logic, and mind, as well as for his lasting influence on the analytic tradition. His thought is often divided into two phases: that of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and that of the Philosophical Investigations, works that redefined Western philosophy.

Life and Education

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born into one of Austria’s wealthiest families, the youngest of eight children. His father, Karl Wittgenstein, was a steel industry magnate, which provided Ludwig with an excellent education. Initially, he studied mechanical engineering in Berlin and later aeronautical engineering in Manchester, England. However, his interest in the logical foundations of mathematics led him to philosophy, motivating him to study with Bertrand Russell at the University of Cambridge, where he quickly distinguished himself as a brilliant and original student.

Career and Contributions

Wittgenstein’s early phase culminated in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), written while he served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. In this work, Wittgenstein proposed that the structure of language mirrors the structure of reality, asserting that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” He argued that philosophy should clarify thoughts by analyzing language, thus laying the foundations of logical positivism and profoundly influencing the Vienna Circle.

After publishing the Tractatus, Wittgenstein believed he had solved all philosophical problems and left academia, working as an elementary school teacher in Austria and as a gardener in a monastery. However, he returned to philosophy in the 1930s, teaching at Cambridge, where he developed his later ideas.

His posthumous work Philosophical Investigations (1953) refutes many theses of the Tractatus, inaugurating an approach that emphasizes language use in everyday life. Wittgenstein criticizes the idea that language has a single logical core, showing that meaning is determined by use, through what he called “language games.” This perspective revolutionized fields such as philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and communication theory.

Impact and Legacy

Wittgenstein was radical for the philosophy of his time, influencing not only the analytic tradition but also continental philosophers. His thought transformed conceptions of language, meaning, and mind, impacting authors such as Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and the ordinary language philosophy movement. The clarity, precision, and depth of his analysis became paradigms in philosophical studies.

His style, often aphoristic and fragmented, reflects his belief that philosophy is not a system but an activity of conceptual clarification. Wittgenstein proposed that many philosophical problems arise from linguistic confusions and that, by dissolving them, philosophy fulfills its main role.

Ludwig Wittgenstein died in 1951 at the age of 62 in Cambridge due to prostate cancer. In his final days, he continued working and revising his manuscripts, leaving instructions for their posthumous organization. Although he published only the Tractatus during his lifetime, his posthumous works consolidated him as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century.

Today, Wittgenstein is considered essential to contemporary philosophy. His influence goes beyond philosophy, reaching fields such as linguistics, psychology, and even the arts, due to his reflections on language, meaning, and expression. Wittgenstein bequeathed to the world a unique vision of human thought, demonstrating that understanding the uses of language is fundamental to grasping the very meaning of life and reality.

About the Work

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a profound investigation into the relationship between language, thought, and reality, formulated from a rigorously logical perspective. Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed that the structure of language mirrors the structure of the world, establishing the limits of what can be meaningfully said and what must remain in silence. Through its numbered propositions, he explored logic as the foundation of meaning, arguing that philosophy does not create theories but clarifies thoughts, delineating the ineffable.

Since its publication, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has been recognized as one of the most influential works of twentieth-century philosophy, especially in the philosophy of language and analytical logic. Its unique approach to the relationship between language and the world deeply influenced schools such as logical positivism and paved the way for new philosophical paradigms, including Wittgenstein’s later reflections.

The enduring relevance of the work lies in its ability to provoke a radical re-evaluation of the limits of thought, what can be logically expressed, and the necessary silence before the unsayable. By investigating the essence of language and its connection with reality, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus invites readers to reconsider philosophy not as theory, but as a clarifying activity, marking a revolution in the understanding of philosophical problems.

PREFACE

This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it—or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if there were one person who read it with understanding and to whom it afforded pleasure.

The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language. Its whole meaning could be summed up somewhat as follows: What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.

The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather—not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought).

The limit can, therefore, only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense.

How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

I will only mention that to the great works of Frege and the writings of my friend Bertrand Russell I owe in large measure the stimulation of my thoughts.

If this work has a value it consists in two things. First that in it thoughts are expressed, and this value will be the greater the better the thoughts are expressed. The more the nail has been hit on the head.— Here I am conscious that I have fallen far short of the possible. Simply because my powers are insufficient to cope with the task.—May others come and do it better.

On the other hand the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive. I am, therefore, of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved. And if I am not mistaken in this, then the value of this work secondly consists in the fact that it shows how little has been done when these problems have been solved.

TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

1 The world is everything that is the case.*

1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.

1.12 For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.

1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.

1.2 The world divides into facts.

1.21 Any one can either be the case or not be the case, and everything else remain the same.

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

2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).

2.011 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact.

2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing.

2.0121 It would, so to speak, appear as an accident, when to a thing that could exist alone on its own account, subsequently a state of affairs could be made to fit.

If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them.

(A logical entity cannot be merely possible. Logic treats of every possibility, and all possibilities are its facts.) Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things. If I can think of an object in the context of an atomic fact, I cannot think of it apart from the possibility of this context.

2.0122 The thing is independent, in so far as it can occur in all possible circumstances, but this form of independence is a form of connexion with the atomic fact, a form of dependence. (It is impossible for words to occur in two different ways, alone and in the proposition.)

2.0123 If I know an object, then I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in atomic facts. (Every such possibility must lie in the nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot subsequently be found.

2.01231 In order to know an object, I must know not its external but all its internal qualities.

2.0124 If all objects are given, then thereby are all possible atomic facts also given.

2.013 Every thing is, as it were, in a space of possible atomic facts. I can think of this space as empty, but not of the thing without the space.

2.0131 A spatial object must lie in infinite space. (A point in space is a place for an argument.) A speck in a visual field need not be red, but it must have a colour; it has, so to speak, a colour space round it. A tone must have a pitch, the object of the sense of touch a hardness, etc

.

2.014 Objects contain the possibility of all states of affairs.

2.0141 The possibility of its occurrence in atomic facts is the form of the object.

2.02 The object is simple.

2.0201 Every statement about complexes can be analysed into a statemerit about their constituent parts, and into those propositions which completely describe the complexes.

2.021 Objects form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be compound.

2.0211 If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true.

2.0212 It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true or false).

2.022 It is clear that however different from the real one an imagined world may be, it must have something—a form—in common with the real world.

2.023 This fixed form consists of the objects.

2.0231 The substance of the world can only determine a form and not any material properties. For these are first presented by the propositions—first formed by the configuration of the objects.

2.0232 Roughly speaking: objects are colourless.

2.0233 Two objects of the same logical form are—apart from their external properties—only differentiated from one another in that they are different.

2.02331 Either a thing has properties which no other has, and then one can distinguish it straight away from the others by a description and refer to it; or, on the other hand, there are several things which have the totality of their properties in common, and then it is quite impossible to point to any one of them. For if a thing is not distinguished by anything, I cannot distinguish it—for otherwise it would be distinguished.

2.024 Substance is what exists independently of what is the case.

2.025 It is form and content.

2.0251 Space, time and colour (colouredness) are forms of objects.

2.026 Only if there are objects can there be a fixed form of the world.

2.027 The fixed, the existent and the object are one.

2.0271 The object is the fixed, the existent; the configuration is the changing, the variable.

2.0272 The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact.

2.03 In the atomic fact objects hang one in another, like the members of a chain.

2.031 In the atomic fact the objects are combined in a definite way.

2.032 The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact.

2.033 The form is the possibility of the structure.

2.034 The structure of the fact consists of the structures of the atomic facts.

2.04 The totality of existent atomic facts is the world.

2.05 The totality of existent atomic facts also determines which atomic facts do not exist.