Overshadowed by the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus also celebrates 100 years in 2022. One of the most influential works of philosophy of the 20th century, its Austrian author had significant links to Ireland, living at various times in Dublin, Wicklow and Connemara.
Born into one of the wealthiest families of the Austro-Hungarian empire, initially studying engineering and then mentored by Bertrand Russell at Cambridge, Wittgenstein (1889-1951) enlisted as a private in the Austrian army in 1914. Russell, who had just produced the monumental work Principia Mathematica with Whitehead, believed that Wittgenstein would make the next decisive move in logic and metaphysics but lost contact with him during the war.
Wittgenstein won decorations for bravery, continued his philosophical reflections, gave away his immense personal wealth under the influence of Tolstoy’s version of the Gospels and eventually ended up in a prisoner of war camp at Monte Cassino in Italy. There he worked quickly and produced the short lapidary manuscript which was the only philosophy book he published during his life (his posthumous output has been prodigious).
He made contact with Russell who wrote an introduction and helped him get it published, initially in a German journal in 1921, Annales der Naturphilosophie, and in a definitive version with Kegan Paul, translated into English by CK Ogden and Frank Ramsay, in 1922.
The style of the book is unusual. It consists of aphoristic numbered propositions. There are seven key propositions with subsidiary propositions commenting on them. It begins with 1. “The world is all that is the case” and ends with 7. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must keep silent”. In between are reflections on the nature of language, the structure of reality, the nature of logic, the nature of philosophy, the mystical.
The core problem occupying Wittgenstein was the nature of logic. How might one explain the key notions of inference, validity, truth-preservation that operate in reasoned argument over any domain? He slowly came to realise that the propositions of logic do not represent anything, they do not picture facts. But they trace a scaffolding which holds always and everywhere.
Logical propositions are connected to other propositions which do picture things in the world, as a framework which orders and structures them. Ordinary propositions have a structure which pictures, or mirrors, facts in reality. So by attending to the structure of such propositions one can begin to discern the basic nature of reality, consisting of facts, elementary facts and objects. The Tractatus opens with his account of the nature of reality:
1 The world is all that is the case
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things
The details of each of the issues he discussed, ie the nature of logic, the nature of representation, the nature of reality — have occupied legions of commentators. But the most curious aspect of the book is its closing sections, dealing with sense, senseless and nonsense. A proposition with sense pictures something in reality (eg the cat is on the mat).
A senseless proposition is one which doesn’t describe such a situation, but sets up a logical possibility “either the cat is on the mat or it is not”. However, nonsensical propositions are those which attempt to say what can only be shown. They are propositions which try to step outside the bounds of language and describe how language relates to reality. But paradoxically these are the very propositions of the Tractatus itself, and so Wittgenstein says “anyone who understands me eventually recognises them as nonsensical, when he has used them — as steps — to climb up beyond them”.
This has led to a wide diversity of interpretations. Early positivistic readings used it to deny metaphysics. Later mystical interpretations read into it a kind of negative theology. So-called resolute readings take nonsense seriously and want to show that it has an elucidatory function. But the chief critic of the work was Wittgenstein himself, who later came to think that he was mistaken, and that the kind of mistake he made was deep and required a kind of therapy to wean oneself away from it.
His later philosophy was a sustained engagement with his earlier work, exploring the ways in which he believed he had been bewitched by language. The architect of the “linguistic turn” in analytic philosophy inspired poets, musicians, painters and novelists with the crystalline propositions of the Tractatus, which first appeared in English in the summer of 1922.
Prof Paul O’Grady is head of School of Social Science and Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
Five philosophical classics for the holiday suitcase:
Anyone who has attempted to read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus will discover another similarity to Joyce’s Ulysses: it’s very hard going. As a beach read this summer, however, it has the advantage of being short (running to a mere 75 pages).
What other philosophical classics might you pack in your holiday suitcase? Consider the following:
An Oration concerning the Foreign Travels of Young Gentlemen by Margaret Cavendish: a pioneering work on the ethics of tourism, it explores the moral duties of holiday-makers long before they had to agonise over carbon footprints.
The Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: perfect for rambling around the continent (and, appropriately for a holiday book, it was unfinished).
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke: overlooking the Grand Canyon or the Lakes of Killarney can only be enhanced by this analysis of awe.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau: don’t expect any sympathy for glamping here — connecting with nature means getting down and dirty, according to Thoreau.
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch: a philosophical Booker Prize winner about self-absorption, ageing, and anticlimax — in short, the full package holiday.
Joe Humphreys
The Unthinkable philosophy column is on summer retreat and returns in September
