Rereading the Tractucus

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Available from Gutenberg Archive.

First time read Wittgensteins Tractatus I loved it. I tend to read philosophy as a part of language studies. I remember it as this strange wonderful wavefront on the magnificence of propositional logicalizing in a perfectly formal attitude (itemized like Euclid).

Thought what a smashing exuberance (it is exuberant, kind of reminded me of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in that way). Charged with tracking, as he delineates/decimalizes, the proposition of a logical system, that declares itself based on “fact,” as opposed to things.

Cutty Sarcus, I am thinking, with that dog latin title?! Latin comic is he being? No yes maybe.

It is a fun read — if you are into language and concepts about thought, it is beautifully written. And approached in a manner looking to simplify. I read in a headlong gulp — watching him track through propositional language, something that can be itemized but cannot be caught — except as defined by itself.

Its kind of like a treatise on what is and is not a pipe, while discussing an enumeration of metaphysical values and logical forms. Heavy as water soaked in silk.

Yes — it is positing itself as a theory of everything. “1. The world is everything that is the case.”

And relates back to identifying statements of proof — but with respect to pictures of facts. “2.1 We make ourselves pictures of facts.”

And then goes on to discuss how thoughts (including science and math) can be expressed through propositional elements. “4.01 The proposition is a picture of reality.”

FAMOUS QUOTES FROM

“5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

“5.621 The world and life are one.”

“5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)”

“6.44 Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.”

“6.522 There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.”

VERY FAMOUS QUOTE FROM

“6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.”

So you see he is Cutty Sarcus the latin comic, of a sort. With an introduction by Bertrand Russell, say no more.

Project Gutenberg’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein; Title: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein; Contributor: Bertrand Russell; Translator: C. K. Ogden; Original Language: German

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