Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
A Critical Guide

Eleven essays by leading scholars on Wittgenstein's Tractatus, presenting ideas on how to read the Tractatus and its relevance to contemporary thought.

José L. Zalabardo (Edited by)

9781316512548, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 2024

246 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

'Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus thus proves, after more than a hundred years, still capable of generating new insights. A Critical Guide focuses less on technical expositions and chooses instead to place Wittgenstein's masterpiece in a historical context and to clarify the unsaid ideas within it. For although the philosopher may have ended his book with the famous remark that one should remain silent about that which cannot be spoken, the collection proves that it is more interesting not to follow the master in this.' Karl van Heijster, Boekenkrant

Published just over a century ago, Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length work to have been published during his lifetime and it continues to generate interest and scholarly debate. It is structured as a series of propositions on metaphysics, language, the nature of philosophy, and the distinction between what can be said and what can be shown. This volume brings together eleven new essays on the Tractatus covering a wide variety of topics, from the central Tractarian doctrines concerning representation, the structure of the world and the nature of logic, to less prominent issues including ethics, natural science, mathematics and the self. Individual essays advance specific exegetical debates in important ways, and taken as a whole they offer an excellent showcase of contemporary ideas on how to read the Tractatus and its relevance to contemporary thought.

Introduction José L. Zalabardo
1. Wittgenstein's impatient reply to Russell Cora Diamond
2. Modality in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Juliet Floyd and Sanford Shieh
3. Clarification and analysis in the Tractatus Sébastien Gandon
4. The fish tale: the unity of language and the world in light of TLP 4.014 Hanne Appelqvist
5. That which 'is true' must already contain the verb: Wittgenstein's rejection of Frege's separation of judgment from content Colin Johnston
6. Solipsism and the self Michael Potter
7. The Tractatus and the first person Maria van der Schaar
8. Arithmetic in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Mathieu Marion and Mitsuhiro Okada
9. 'Normal connections' and the law of causality Joshua Eisenthal
10. The ethical dimension of the Tractatus Ilse Somavilla
11. 'Obviously wrong': the Tractatus on will and world Duncan Richter
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF]