Introduction to the book and the author:
Tractatus-Logico
Philosophicus is the only
book published by German philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein during his life time. Tractatus
was first published in the year 1921 in German and translated in 1922 in
English. Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most influential philosophers of the
twentieth century.
His early work was influenced by that of Arthur Schopenhauer
and especially by his teacher Bertrand Russell. Clearly, the book addresses the
central problems of philosophy, which deal with the world, thought and language
and presents a ‘solution’ (as Wittgenstein terms it) of these problems that is
grounded in logic and in the nature of representation. The world is represented
by thoughts, which is a proposition with sense, since they all──world, thought
and proposition, share the same logical form. Hence, the thought and the
propositions can be pictures of facts. Tractatus
claimed to solve all the major problems of philosophy and was held in
especially high esteem by the anti-metaphysical logical positivists. Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, whether or not it prove or give the ultimate truth on
the matters with which it deals, certainly deserves, by its breadth and scope
and profundity, to be considered an important event in the philosophical world.
Starting from the principles of symbolism and the relations which are necessary
between words and things in any language, it applies the result of this enquiry
to various departments of traditional philosophy, showing in case how
traditional philosophy and traditional solutions arise out of ignorance of the
principles of symbolism and out of misuse of language (not to be taken in a
derogatory sense).[1]The
Tractatus is based on the idea that
the philosophical problems arise out of misunderstandings of the logic of
language, and philosophy aims at logical clarification of thoughts, philosophy is not a body of doctrines but
an activity.
Aim
of the book:
He takes up this task of clarification
of thoughts in the Tractaus by
presenting seven propositions and made extensive comments on six of them, the
seventh proposition that he wrote is without any comment but is self
explanatory. He laid out an ambitious plan to curb out the kind of sickness he
felt in the philosophers. This sickness which he referred to was the sickness
of ambiguous, inappropriate or may be wrong use of logic of language.
Wittgenstein not only criticised and questioned the classical mode of doing
philosophy but also did it in a slightly different way, like he said in this
regard “a man will be imprisoned in a
room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not
occur to him to pull rather than push”.
Format
of the book:
Wittgenstein writes not consecutive
prose but short propositions, numbered so as to show the emphasis laid upon
them in his exposition. This gives his work an attractive epigrammatic flavour
and perhaps makes it more accurate in detail, as each sentence must have received separate considerations; but it
seems to have prevented him from giving adequate explanations of many of his
technical terms and theories, perhaps because explanations require some
sacrifice of accuracy. Tractatus
appears to be an appropriate book with not much descriptions but elucidations
in it. And philosophy is supposed to be “elucidatory” not “descriptive”. Since
the book is in the propositional form we cannot say that some propositions hold
a stronger position in explaining Wittgenstein’s thoughts while other
propositions are not of much importance. In fact, “All propositions that Wittgenstein mentions in his book are of equal
value.” This can be the “fundamental thought” of the book.
Keeping the above fundamental book in
our mind a better reading of the
book can be done only when the reader reads one proposition, moves ahead. Every
proposition actually gets you somewhere. A very important point should be also
noted down or kept in mind while reading this book that the treatise in the
logical form has been “shown” and
not “said”. The author is only
presenting a picture of reality; he is only trying to show the relation of
thought with the language and language with the world. Wittgenstein’s first
proposition in the book is “the world is
all that is case” (TLP 1*).[2]
The world is totality of facts and not of things. He further goes on to explain
his propositions in the form of short expositions. The common aspect of each
proposition is that the picturing of facts is very clear, specific and most
importantly it’s precise. Generally, in philosophy a kind of confusion and
ruckus is created when the sentences used by the philosophers are long and
descriptive. The concept which they take up revolves round and round followed
by few inferences and deductions and formulations of theories, which should not
be the task of philosophy. Wittgenstein changes the traditional way of doing
philosophy by using a method which we can see in the Tractatus.
Understanding use of language:
The point is very clear that the state of
affairs exist in the world, the use of language is to refer to these affairs.
The world exists whether we know about it or not. To make this point more
explicit I would like to quote Wittgenstein “the limits of my language are the limits of my world”. The
limitations we take upon ourselves by thinking in terms of particular theories
or speaking in particular ways are human limits that we have chosen for
ourselves; they are not intrinsic limitations imposed upon us by the world, and
this, of course, is something that Wittgenstein wanted to bring to our explicit
attention. Wittgenstein says that “language
is part of our organism and no less complicated that it”. Now, in Tractatus
we get an understanding that how language shapes our lives. However every word
is open to different interpretations when one “is the case” while “other
is not the case”. But every other thing remains the same. For example the
word ‘handle’ in every case means the same thing, to be handled but handle of a
bike is different from the handle of a door and both of these are entirely
different from when one says “handle the crowd”. Hence when the speaker means
the later sentence then the former meaning is not valid in the same case but it
doesn’t imply that it is invalid and non-sense in every case. The author takes
an approach to show that how logic of language is different from daily life
language. The above example makes it very evident that the meaning of the word
should be derived from the context. Well, it becomes a matter of common sense
that we derive the meaning from the context but what about when a word is said
in a particular context which is culture specific, may be not of my culture,
how am I supposed to understand if there is no literal translation for that
particular word. From this comes the conclusion that language is much more than just a mode of communication or reference.
True, that we use language for naming things, but my question is, does naming
and referring are the last things that we do with language?
LANGUAGE AS FORM OF LIFE:
Language
is a form of life, a presentation and representation of our culture, tradition
and lifestyle. After I finished reading Tractatus
the conclusion which I drew from this book is that, it gives a more realistic approach in reading philosophy, philosophy of
language and understanding the uses of language. Although Wittgenstein
didn’t showed too much in this book, yet he showed a lot which had to be showed.
He talks about the ambiguity in the language that philosophy uses. Rather than
solving the problem which it seeks to, it creates more ambiguity.
To conclude I would like to say
that Wittgenstein wrote Tractatus as
therapeutic remedy, viewing philosophy itself as therapy, for the sickness that
he thought that the philosophers have. This sickness was wrong use of language
or it would be better to say that an ambiguous use of language. The task of
philosophy can be deduced from this book to “show something or present before
us”, it should neither supply any theory nor deduce anything. Wittgenstein
undoubtedly stuck to this point throughout the book and resolves all the ambiguities
and presents a clearer understanding of the Tractatus.
With his last proposition “what we
cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” the whole sense of the book might be summed up in this last proposition. I am bound to call this book and the
author belongs to a different genre. For, this book does not resemble to any
previously written book in my knowledge. There are different interpretations of
this book; my interpretation compels me to call it a tutorial for the
philosophers to make them learn the proper picturing of facts rather deducing
facts. Along with that the Tractatus itself,
very impressively presents a clear picture of world, thought and logic of
language and the relation our language with our world.
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