Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig WittgensteinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
"Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent".... That is the 7th and last proposition of Wittgenstein's seminal work: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I suppose this could apply to my book review, since I understand so little of this book I should just be silent ;)
I read this book for two main reasons: because of the historical significance of this work, it is said by many to be one of the greatest philosophical works of the 20th century and to help me understand Wittgenstein's later writings, especially his posthumously published "Philosophical Investigations" which talks about "language games" - a concept and work that is fairly common in modern philosophy and theology. It is a short but dense work in the philosophical family of logical positivism. In seeking to answer the common philosophical problems, Wittgenstein points to the logical errors used in language as a root of all philosophical problems and aims to design a laws for logical language. The book is broken into the below 7 propositions and written in a really interesting point by point manner. The 7 basic proposition are listed below....
7 Basic Propositions
1. The world is everything that is the case
2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
4. The thought is the significant proposition.
5. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.
6. The general form of truth-function is [p, E,N (E)]
7. Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent
Check out this website for one cool way of reading two different translations of the Tractatus
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