[Routledge Classics] Ludwig Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless

Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language. They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful

What is complex in the world is a fact. Facts which are not compounded of other facts are what Mr Wittgenstein calls Sachverhalte, whereas a fact which may consist of two or more facts is called a Tatsache: thus, for example, ‘Socrates is wise’ is a Sachverhalt, as well as a Tatsache, whereas ‘Socrates is wise and Plato is his pupil’ is a Tatsache but not a Sachverhalt

Mr Wittgenstein begins his theory of Symbolism with the statement (2.1): ‘We make to ourselves pictures of facts. ’ A picture, he says, is a model of the reality, and to the objects in the reality correspond the elements of the picture: the picture itself is a fact. The fact that things have a certain relation to each other is represented by the fact that in the picture its elements have a certain relation to one another

quite correct, but this cannot be said, it can only be shown. That the world is my world appears in the fact that the boundaries of language (the only language I understand) indicate the boundaries of my world

That the world is my world appears in the fact that the boundaries of language (the

quite correct, but this cannot be said, it can only be shown. That the world is my world appears in the fact that the boundaries of language (the only language I understand) indicate the boundaries of my world

That the world is my world appears in the fact that the boundaries of language (the only language I understand) indicate the boundaries of my world

Nevertheless he is capable of conveying his ethical opinions. His defence would be that what he calls the mystical can be shown,

defence would be that what he calls the mystical can be shown, although

These difculties suggest to my mind some such possibility as this: that every language has, as Mr Wittgenstein says, a structure concerning which, in the language, nothing can be said, but that there may be another language dealing with the structure of the frst language, and having itself a new structure, and that to this hierarchy of languages there may be no limit. Mr Wittgenstein would of course reply that his whole theory is applicable unchanged to the totality of such languages

As one with a long experience of the difculties of logic and of the deceptiveness of theories which seem irrefutable, I fnd myself unable to be sure of the rightness of a theory, merely on the ground that I cannot see any point on which it is wrong. But to have constructed a theory of logic which is not at any point obviously wrong is to have achieved a work of extraordinary difculty and importance. This merit, in my opinion, belongs to Mr Wittgenstein’s book

what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence

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)

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What constitutes a picture is that its elements are related2.14 to one another in a determinate way

What constitutes a picture is that its elements

What constitutes a picture is that its elements are related2.14 to one another in a determinate way

Defnitions are rules for translating from one language3.343 into another. Any correct sign-language must be translatable into any other in accordance with such rules: it is this that they all have in common

Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely diferent purposes. The tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.

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Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language.