Abstract

The question of who or what the happy man mentioned in Wittgenstein's Tractatus really is leads to a discussion of connected issues, e.g. the question of the Schopenhauerian origins of certain key notions of Wittgenstein's early philosophy, the import of the concept of a world-soul (with its Goethian overtones), the topic of solipsism, and the puzzling question of what is involved in the self's identification with the world.