Abstract

Ludwig Wittgenstein crossed the second Styx, from living memory to history, during the years since the present century began. He is recognized today as one of the most original and powerful thinkers of the twentieth century, and his work belongs to the body of literature philosophers will read and interpret afresh in each generation, for as long as the European intellectual tradition survives. He wrote nothing in political philosophy or jurisprudence, very little in ethics, and the only sustained record of his philosophical ideas about religion and art consists in notes taken by students at his lectures. The Tractatus was published in 1921. In this book, Wittgenstein argues that the logical form of a proposition is utterly different from its superficial grammatical form. The greatest obstacles to understanding Wittgenstein's philosophy are not any inherent obscurity in his ideas, but the aphoristic style in which he wrote and the introverted character of his thought.