Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein: three parallel tree-structured editions. (1) Tree-structured arrangement of the German text, edited by David G. Stern, Joachim Schulte and Katia Saporiti. (2) Tree-structured arrangement of the English translation by Ogden and Ramsey, edited by David G. Stern. (3) Tree-structured arrangement of the English translation by Pears and McGuinness, edited by David G. Stern.

Je pose une question concernant la place du Tractatus de Wittgenstein dans la tradition éthique. Le Tractatus et la tradition éthique Les remarques que je ferai sont à considérer dans le contexte d'une interprétation du Tractatus qui a été qualifiée de lecture résolue de cette œuvre, ainsi que de la philosophie de Wittgenstein en général Comme l'a écrit Cora Diamond, le Tractatus travaille sur la libération des besoins et des désirs philosophiques, une libération de la philosophie (...) effectuée avec des outils philosophiques : la situation du Tractatus est similaire à celle évoquée dans les Recherches et dans l'œuvre ultérieure, qui se consacre également au projet de se libérer de la philosophie pour le bien de la philosophie. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's conception of the general form of a truth function given in thesis 6 can be presented as a sort of a trade-off: the author of the Tractatus is unable to reconcile the simplicity of his original idea of a series of forms with the simplicity of his generalisation of Sheffer's stroke; therefore, he is forced to sacrifice one of them. As we argue in this paper, the choice he makes – to weaken the logical constraints put on the (...) concept of a series of forms, thus effectively metaphorising that concept for the sake of upholding the N-operation's role of generating the series – is unfortunate. An actual expansion of a series of truth functions as defined in 6 would require either making decisions at each step (Anscombe) or outwardly rejecting the concept of a series (Sundholm). However, neither is faithful to Wittgenstein's own fundamental intuitions regarding the nature of logic. For this reason, a different trade-off that prioritises upholding the basic features of a series of forms over the simplicity of the operation that generates that series seems to be much more reasonable. We offer such a trade-off by developing the schema already present in the Tractatus (5.101). The key element of our alternative solution is the construction of an operation that can perform the task of producing all consecutive truth functions of a given collection of atomic propositions as an invariant difference between any base and its successor throughout the series. We define it as a composition of three functions (in an algebraic sense): the first turns a symbol of a given truth function into a binary number, the second increments that number, the third turns the result back into a symbol of another truth function. We also show how the operation can be defined by means of a different notation without invoking binary arithmetic. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’un sonunda, kendisini anlayan okuyucunun, söylediklerinin saçma olduğunu göreceğini söyler. Eserin bu paradoksu eserle tanışan hemen her okuyucu için bir kafa karışıklığı vesilesidir. Eğer eserde dile getirilenler saçmaysa bunların saçma olduğu da dahil olmak üzere eserin dile getirdiklerini ciddiye almamak gerekir, eğer eser ciddiye alınacaksa söylenenlerin saçma olduğunu kabul etmek gerekir. Eserin bu paradoksunun nasıl ele alınması gerektiğine dair hatırı sayılır bir literatür vardır. Bu çalışmada, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’taki bu paradoksun, saçmanın sağaltıcı işleviyle değerlendirildiğinde eseri anlamayı engellemeyeceği (...) fikri savunulacaktır. Bunun için öncelikle genel olarak Resim Kuramı’nın ana hatlarından söz ederek Wittgenstein için saçmanın ne olduğunu anlatacağım. Daha sonra, Wittgenstein için saçmanın işlevinin ne olduğuna dair iyi gerekçelendirildiğini düşündüğüm fikirlerden söz edeceğim. Son olarak, saçmaya işaret edebilmenin ancak saçma ile mümkün olduğunu, Wittgenstein’ın bu yolla yaygın bir yanılgıyı sağalttığını ve dolayısıyla saçmanın sağaltıcı bir işlevi olduğunu iddia edeceğim. (shrink)

Le premier Wittgenstein expose dans le Tractatus une philosophie des sciences marquée par le conventionnalisme complété d’un certain vérificationnisme assuré par la logique de l’ Abbildung. Pour autant il ne développe aucune idéologiste scientiste. A partir de 1929, sa philosophie prend un tournant grammatical : la « grammaire » de la science comporte non seulement les lois logiques, mais aussi la partie théorique des sciences de la nature. L’assimilation des grandes théories (Copernic, Darwin, Freud) à des « vues synoptiques (...) » rassemblant une quantité de phénomènes, comme les paradigmes de Kuhn, n’empêche pas Wittgenstein de donner à sa philosophie le tour d’un incontestable réalisme (au sens de Cora Diamond). La dernière partie de ce texte essaie d’apprécier, à partir de Wittgenstein, les différences et les relations entre science et philosophie dans le naturalisme contemporain. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is one of the most important philosophical works of the Twentieth Century, yet it is brief and offers little orientation for the reader. This causes two problems: The first-time reader is left wondering what it could be about, and often leaves off reading in frustration after a few pages. The scholar is left with little guidance for interpretation. This paper recounts selected material from my book Tractatus in Context. While the book includes familiar material from Wittgenstein’s (...) notebooks and letters, it also includes lesser-known material such as untranslated correspondence and notebook entries, later lectures and dictations, notes from Ramsey, and previously unknown reviews. Some of the topics to be examined are: simple objects, atomic facts and elementary propositions, limits and boundaries, superstition, the shape of the visual field, and the role of the will. Given the occasion, I’ll also focus on some ways in which conversations with the Vienna Circle help illuminate obscure passages in the Tractatus. (shrink)

Reading the Tractatus. And appreciating it The reception history of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus displays an impressive and persistent diversity. This paper explores possible sources of that diversity and locates them in different takes on the text and its context of origin, and in different perspectives of the readers. This hermeneutics is illustrated by a comparison of two views on the importance of ethics for an understanding of the Tractatus: that of Cora Diamond and the one developed by (...) the authors in previous work. (shrink)

En el presente artículo, me centraré únicamente en la ontología del Tractatus porque, a pesar de ser uno de los temas que abandona después de 1930, tiene dos aspectos que quisiera resaltar de manera especial: su carácter relacional, y su afirmación de la contingencia del mundo. Considero que ambos son de interés en sí mismos por su carácter inédito, pero creo, además, que es posible establecer sugerentes relaciones entre ellos y algunas posiciones contemporáneas, tanto de las ciencias naturales como (...) de las ciencias sociales. En el primer caso, haré referencia al libro recientemente publicado de Friedrich Hülster, Introduction to Wittgenstein´s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Para el segundo, tomaré como punto de partida Radical Uncertainty, publicado el año pasado por John Kay y Marvyn King. (shrink)

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captivated the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 30s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its (...) philosophy of language, finding attractive, if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, Wittgenstein himself, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. The posthumous publication of other writings has, therefore, only served to reawaken interest in the Tractatus and to illuminate its more neglected aspects. David Pears and Brian McGuinness revised their translation in the light of Wittgenstein's own suggestions and comments in his correspondence with C.K. Ogden about the first translation. In addition, this edition contains the introduction by Bertrand Russell which appeared in the original English translation. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to compare the role played by logical analysis in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Russell’s On Denoting. Whereas in Russell’s work it is an important element of his argument in support of description theory, in his pupil’s it does not function this way. Russell, while analysing various propositions, including descriptions translates them into formal language, indicating that those propositions, despite the appearances, in fact do not denote. Logical analysis shall be a tool decisive in (...) favour of Russell’s thesis. Wittgenstein similarly analyses some troublesome propositions and claims that they are meaningless. The difference is that Russell’s final conclusion is derived from logical analysis, whereas Wittgenstein’s from pure speculation. In Tractatus logico-philosophicus logical analysis is not a method thanks to which the author gets certain result, just as it was the case with his teacher and his On Denoting. In Wittgenstein’s early philosophy logical analysis concerns just a few technical problems connected only to some ideas from Principia mathematica, and not to the main subject of his work, which is the analysis of philosophical theses. (shrink)

I discuss the account of logical consequence advanced in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I argue that the role that elementary propositions are meant to play in this account can be used to explain two remarkable features that Wittgenstein ascribes to them: that they are logically independent from one another and that their components refer to simple objects. I end with a proposal as to how to understand Wittgenstein's claim that all propositions can be analysed as truth functions of elementary propositions.

The aim of this paper is to discuss Wittgenstein's conception of truth in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Section 1 sets the scene by exploring how the notion of truth is in the Tractatus intertwined with notions such as sense and picture. In section 2 I discuss a traditional interpretation that sees the Tractatus as committed to truth as correspondence. In sections 3 and 4 I discuss two more recent alternative lines of interpretation; according to one, we should interpret (...) truth in the Tractatus as a relation of identity. According to the other, the Tractatus endorses a deflationary account of truth. I conclude in section 5 by adjudicating the interpretative debate. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that some of the central doctrines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be seen as addressing the twin problems of semantic unity and...

Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' is one of the most important books of the twentieth century. It influenced philosophers and artists alike and it continues to fascinate readers today. It offers rigorous arguments but clothes them in enigmatic pronouncements. Wittgenstein himself said that his book is 'strictly philosophical and simultaneously literary, and yet there is no blathering in it'. This introduction, first published in 2005, considers both the philosophical and the literary aspects of the 'Tractatus' and shows how they (...) are related. It also shows how the work fits into Wittgenstein's philosophical development and the tradition of analytic philosophy, arguing strongly for the vigour and significance of that tradition. (shrink)

A spectator of the passing philosophical scene, recently encountering the current controversy about “resolute readings” of the Tractatus, might be forgiven for finding it difficult to figure out what the debate is supposed to be about and who exactly is on which side and why. This chapter demonstrates, through a reconstruction of some relevant features of “the” debate, that at one point there are in fact several orthogonal debates taking place, confusedly cast as contributions to a single debate. It (...) indicates some of the respects in which the term “resolute reading” has come to acquire different meanings, and sometimes even a different logic. The chapter traces the shifts in the meaning of the term “resolute reading” and the related family of cognate and contrastive expressions. Cora Diamond and James Conant are often presented as the main proponents of a “resolute reading” of the Tractatus. (shrink)

"Ludwig Wittgenstein's brief Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is one of the most important philosophical works of the Twentieth Century, yet it offers little orientation for the reader. The first-time reader is left wondering what it could be about, and the scholar is left with little guidance for interpretation. In Tractatus in Context, James C. Klagge presents the vital background necessary for appreciating Wittgenstein's gnomic masterpiece. Tractatus in Context contains the early reactions to the Tractatus, including the initial reviews (...) written in 1922-1924. And while we can't talk with Wittgenstein, we can do the next best thing-hear what he had to say about the Tractatus. Klagge thus presents what Wittgenstein thought about germane issues leading up to his writing the book, in discussions and correspondence with others about his ideas, and what he had to say about the Tractatus after it was written-in letters, lectures and conversations. It offers, you might say, Wittgenstein's own commentary on the book. Key Features: Illuminates what is at stake in the Tractatus, by providing the views of others that engaged Wittgenstein as he was writing it. Includes Wittgenstein's earlier thoughts on ideas in the book as recorded in his notebooks, letters, and conversations as well as his later, retrospective comments on those ideas. Draws on new or little-known sources, such as Wittgenstein's coded notebooks, Hermine's notes, Frege's letters, Hänsel's diary, Ramsey's notes, and Skinner's dictations. Draws connections between the background context and specific passages in the Tractatus, using a proposition-by-proposition commentary"--. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to explore an analogy between logic and ethics, as Wittgenstein understands them in the Tractatus. First, I argue that Wittgenstein regards logic as a condition of the possibility of meaning, in the sense that logic makes meaningful language and thought possible. Second, I ask why Wittgenstein calls both logic and ethics ‘transcendental’. I suggest that, while logic is a condition of the possibility of semantic meaning, ethics is a condition of the possibility of (...) existential meaning. Without ethics, life could not be meaningful. Third, I show that harmony and agreement play a crucial role in Wittgenstein’s accounts of logic and ethics. A meaningful proposition can be true or false, a meaningful life can be happy or unhappy, and both truth and happiness consist in some kind of harmony or agreement with reality. (shrink)

Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus (Political-Philosophical Treatise) aims to establish the principles of good governance and of a happy society, and to open up new directions for the future development of humankind. W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz demonstrates the necessity of, and provides a guide for, the redirection of humanity. He argues that this paradigm shift must involve changing the character of social life and politics from competitive to cooperative, encouraging moral and intellectual virtues, providing foundations for happy societies, promoting peace among countries and (...) building a strong international community. (shrink)

I propose that, in its form, it is possible to make a religious reading of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus along the lines of how Wittgenstein himself understood religion, and in particular, religious conversion. This idea could appear to be completely senseless. But we cannot forget that Wittgenstein himself said that although he did not consider himself a religious man, he could not help seeing every problem in a religious way. It is precisely this religious way of thinking that I would like (...) to apply to the Tractatus. I begin by elucidating Wittgenstein's ideas of ​​religion, especially his notion of religious conversion. After that, I briefly describe the Tractatus, its objectives, and what happens if we climb the ladder of this work. I then show how the goals of the work and where the ladder of the Tractatus leads us take a religious form. That is, they lead to a conversion to a new way of seeing the world and language. This is similar to a religious conversion that makes us see the world in a completely different way. I conclude by discussing how such a religious perspective helps us to understand the sense of the Tractatus by making an analogy with the Wittgenstein’s ideas in relation to the role of religious doctrine. (shrink)

En este artículo —conmemorativo de los cien años del Tractatus— me centraré en la primera gran obra de Wittgenstein y, en lo que sería su objetivo central que, como él mismo lo reconoce en la introducción, no es otro que el de “Trazar unos límites al pensamiento, o mejor, no al pensamiento, sino a la expresión de los pensamientos”, destacando en el lenguaje la proposición, pues es en esta donde aquel se expresa sensiblemente. Para el temprano Wittgenstein, los límites (...) del pensamiento solo se pueden trazar en el lenguaje y no por fuera de él, pues “lo que está al otro lado del límite no tiene sentido”. (shrink)

Carnap and Wittgenstein were always far apart on issues of fundamental importance, even on questions where one might have supposed them to be close. Specifically, I will try to show that beneath what at first sight could appear to be a philosophical difference over a mundane question regarding the nature of the propositions of logic, in fact exemplified a chasm between Wittgenstein’s and Carnap’s understanding of our relation to language and the world. After first laying out Carnap’s own understanding of (...) his difference between himself and Wittgenstein on the nature of tautology, I explicate Wittgenstein’s rejection of what would soon become Carnap’s metalogical stance in The Logical Syntax of Language. I do this in terms of Wittgenstein’s reception of Frege, the significance for Wittgenstein of the sign/symbol distinction, and his views of ordinary language and skepticism already at work in the Tractatus. I point out a connection between Heidegger and Wittgenstein on ordinary language that distinguishes them both from the dominant traditions in analytic philosophy of language and from much contemporary post-modernist views of language. Finally I bring out what was at stake personally and culturally for Wittgenstein in his difference from Carnap on logical syntax. (shrink)

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captured the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 1930s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy of language, finding attractive, even if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that (...) propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, its own author, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. C.K. Ogden's translation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has a unique provenance. As revealed in Letters of C.K. Ogden (1973) and in correspondence in The Times Literary Supplement , Wittgenstein, Ramsey and Moore all worked with Ogden on the translation, which had Wittgenstein's complete approval. The very name Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was of Ogden's devising; and there is very strong feeling among philosophers that, among the differing translations of this work, Ogden's is the definitive text - and Wittgenstein's version of the English equivalent of his Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. (shrink)

On many interpretations of Spinoza’s political philosophy, democracy emerges as his ideal type of government. But a type of government can be ideal and yet it can be unwise to implement it if certain background conditions obtain. For example, a dominion’s people can be too ‘wretched by the conditions of slavery’ to rule themselves. This begs the following question. Do Spinoza’s arguments for democracy entail that all political bodies should be democracies at all times (the received view), or do they (...) merely entail that we should only have a democracy when the right sort of background conditions are in place (the challenging view)? This paper argues that a new interpretation of one of the four versions of the rationality argument for democracy as it features in the Tractatus entails that the received view is correct. The paper also explains away part of the appeal of the challenging view by arguing that none of the other versions of the rationality argument supports the received view. It closes by arguing that a slightly modernised version of the rationality argument can be important for contemporary political philosophy. (shrink)

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein criticizes Frege and Russell's view that laws of inference (Schlussgesetze) "justify" logical inferences. What lies behind this criticism, I argue, is an attack on Frege and Russell's conceptions of logical entailment. In passing, I examine Russell's dispute with Bradley on the question whether all relations are "internal".

Drawing on recent work on the nature of the numbering system of the _Tractatus_ and Wittgenstein’s use of that system in his composition of the _Prototractatus_, the paper sets out the rationale for the online tool called__ __ The University of Iowa Tractatus Map. The map consists of a website with a front page that links to two separate subway-style maps of the hypertextual numbering system Wittgenstein used in his _Tractatus_. One map displays the structure of the published _Tractatus_; (...) the other lays out the structure of the _Prototractatus_. The site makes available the full text of the German and the two canonical English translations.__ __While we envisage the map as a tool that we would like a wide variety of readers to find helpful, we argue that our website amounts to a radically new edition of Wittgenstein’s early masterpiece, with far-reaching implications for the interpretation of that text. In particular, we claim that our visually compelling presentation of the book’s overall structure delivers on Wittgenstein’s cryptic claim in a letter to his publisher that it is the numbers that “make the book surveyable and clear”. (shrink)

It is argued that Wittgenstein’s remarks 6.2-6.22 Tractatus fare well when one focuses on non-quantificational arithmetic, but they are problematic when one moves to quantificational arithmetic.

Dans cet article, nous nous éloignons de l’interprétation classique du Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Notre but est de démontrer que le geste wittgensteinien n’est pas antiphilosophique, qu’il tente au contraire de rendre la pensée à elle-même dans ce qu’elle a de plus profond et de plus dynamique. Wittgenstein renoue avec l’éveil socratique plutôt qu’il ne réduit la philosophie au rang d’auxiliaire sémantique des sciences naturelles.

The article argues for a contextualised reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. It analyses in detail the role that use and application play in the text and how that supports a conception of transcendentality of logic that allows for contextualisation. The article identifies a tension in the text, between the requirement that sense be determinate and the contextual nature of application, and suggests that it is this tension that is a major driver of Wittgenstein’s later ideas.

This paper is divided in four parts. In the first part we introduce the method of internal critique of philosophical theories by examination of their external consistency with scientific theories. In the second part two metaphysical and one epistemological postulate of Wittgenstein's Tractatus are made explicit and formally expressed. In the third part we examine whether Tractarian metaphysical and epistemological postulates (the independence of simple states of affairs, the unique mode of their composition, possibility of complete empirical knowledge) are (...) externally consistent with the theory of quantum mechanics. The result of the inquiry is negative: Tractarian postulates ought to be be revised. Relying on the result we approach the question of the empirical character of logic in the fourth part. The description of theoretical transformations of the notion of disjunction, in its ontological, epistemological, and logical sense, is a common element of in all parts of the text. The conjecture on the existence of different types of disjunctive connectives in the language of quantum mechanics concludes the paper. (shrink)

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captured the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 1930s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy of language, finding attractive, even if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions (...) were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, its own author, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. C.K. Ogden's translation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has a unique provenance. As revealed in Letters of C.K. Ogden and in correspondence in The Times Literary Supplement , Wittgenstein, Ramsey and Moore all worked with Ogden on the translation, which had Wittgenstein's complete approval. The very name Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was of Ogden's devising; and there is very strong feeling among philosophers that, among the differing translations of this work, Ogden's is the definitive text - and Wittgenstein's version of the English equivalent of his Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. (shrink)

This paper examines the analysis of judgements of belief that Wittgenstein offers in 5.54–5.5423 of the Tractatus. We offer an interpretation of these paragraphs wich also pays attention to 5.5423, usually forgotten. In our opinion, this interpretation fits with Wittgenstein’s doctrines, and makes clear that such non-genuine propositions are nonsense. These are not, as has sometimes been proposed, the propositions of psychology. In the second part of the article we give a detailed discussion of interpretations of these paragraphs which (...) have been offered previously. (shrink)

Albert Maslow points out that Wittgenstein dedicated a copy of the Tractatus to Morris Schlick with the following sentence: “ Jeder disese Sätze ist der Ausdruck einer Krankheit ” (Each of this propositions is the manifestation of a disease.) We will try to see some of the treatments to see if the remedy is not, in many cases, worse than the disease. Few philosophical texts have so many material surrounding it as the Tractatus, but and at the same (...) time do maintain such a vast spectrum of interpretations. To the point that one can expect every now and then, exegetical revolutions. Like the political ones, they usually burry the past in its way. An example: the appearance in the 1980s of Wittgenstein's Vienna was a fundamental milestone that showed that it is impossible to dissociate the author from the Viennese intellectual environment. However, attempts have been made to present this new approach as the refutation of the rest, falsely equating the Tractatus with continental philosophy in a book that is really weak in terms of elements of symbolic logic and without any expertise in regard to the philosophy of logic of Frege and Russell, which are essential to understand the context of the concepts in the text of the Tractatus itself and the records of the time. A similar case is the new interpretation that was awarded some ten years later by the North American school: they rightly called attention to the neglect of the essential paradox of the Tractatus of having intended to say what is shown. However, the value of this perspective is lost when the book is treated as the work of a postmodern nihilist, an antimetaphysical dialectician. The same can be said of the interpretation of Raymond Bradley, whose praiseworthy efforts to highlight the Tractarian modal element have resulted in an inadequate Leibnizian framing in his work The Nature of All Being (Bradley, 1992). To show an overview, I would broadly follow the outline of Cerezo (1998), adding and extending his taxonomy a bit. I think Cerezo´s outline is accurate and simple. Cerezo does not take into account contextualist readings or, in any case, it isnt her concern in her Lenguaje y Lógica in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Let us mention among the ways of reading the Tractatus the empiricist perspectives (in classical version, like Russell, or positivist, like those of Shlick and Carnap ), non-empiricist logicists ( Anscombe, Kenny ), Kantian ( Stenius, Coffa ), metaphysical (in actualist variant, Hacker, or positilist Leibnizian, Bradley), continental (such as Janik and Toulmin ), nihilistic ( Diamond and Conant, Ostrow and his dialectical idea ), and MacGuinn 's elucidatory -ecumenical attempt. David Stern (Stern,1998 ) made a stratification that is not incompatible with the one I point out. 1. The logical-atomistic reading ( logical atomist reading ) of Russell ; 2. The reading of logical positivism ( logical positivist reading ) : with the belligerent antimetaphysical charge ; 3. Metaphysical reading ( metaphysical reading ), like Hacker's, with a logically based idea of metaphysics; 4. The irrationalist reading ( irrationalist reading ) that Toulmin and Janik maintain, for example, or Isidro Reguera, where there is pre-eminence of the religious ethic elements; and 5. therapeutic reading ( therapeutic reading ), which poses it as a kind of infinity joke. We are going to add to the list a reading, which we will call a pathological reading. (shrink)

Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus (Political-Philosophical Treatise) is an original work of political philosophy that aims to establish the principles of the good state and of a happy society, and to open up new directions for the future development of humankind. It is also, in part, a response to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The main objective of the book is to demonstrate the necessity of, and provide a guide for, the redirection of humanity. I argue that this paradigm shift (...) must involve changing the character of social life and politics from competitive to cooperative, encouraging moral and intellectual virtues, providing foundations for happy societies, promoting peace among countries and building a strong international community. (shrink)