Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Ludwig Wittgenstein
About This Book
A young philosopher's attempt to solve philosophy once and for all, in a series of numbered propositions written partly in the trenches of WWI.
Wittgenstein's central claim — that language can only meaningfully describe facts about the world, and that most traditional philosophical questions (about ethics, God, the meaning of life) are literally nonsense, not because they're unimportant but because they're outside what language can say — ends with his famous instruction to throw away the book's own ladder once you've climbed it. It's short, aphoristic, and was intended by its author as the final word on its subject before he later disowned much of it himself.
Discussion Questions
- What does Wittgenstein mean by saying the important things in life are “shown,” not “said”?
- Why might Wittgenstein have later rejected much of his own argument here, in his subsequent work?
Audio-Only Edition
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