Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian- British philosopher who was highly interested in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. He is still seen as one of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. He continues to influence current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture. He’s taken many philosophical views and ideas from his teacher- Russell. However, his philosophy differed from many. In his book ‘Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus’ he, by showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, provided new insights into the relations between world, thought and language and thereby into the nature of philosophy.
The structure of the book is simple and presents short thesis that are numbered in order to present different themes or problems that most philosophers deal with. Each of them has comments which expand the subject, in which the philosopher tries to explain the reason these problems occur. In his views it is because the logic of our language is misunderstood. The last comment of the thesis is the beginning of the next one. The 7th thesis ends and sums up the book, therefore there are no comments attached to it. The preface of Tractatus clearly explains that this is not a text book, which anyone would read and like. It can be understood and enjoyed only by those who already have the same thoughts. The author explains that the purpose of the book is to give a limit to expression of thoughts. We should express what can be expressed in words, otherwise, the rest which can’t be expressed must be left in silence.
Thesis 1- 2.063 are about the world and how it is made of facts,
2.1 till 3.03 about pictures and thoughts,
3.1 till 3.1 - 4.0641 about language,
4.1 – 6.031 reality and logic
6.1 - 7 things, that can’t be expressed.
The idea of tractatus is to show that each proposition can be broken into little parts, in order to explore the true meaning of it. Those little parts of the proposition can be broken into even smaller parts, which can help to find the way to find the facts which in the simplest way can explain the meaning of the world.
The philosopher was bothered by traditional philosophy and unnecessary talking, commonly speaking, known as ‘quaking’, therefore the thesis in his book were short, strict and convincing but also consisted problematic and deep meanings. They started from logical facts, such as ‘The world is all that is the case’ followed by ‘The world is the totality of facts, not of things’. Wittgenstein had also the courage to make an interesting criticism of his masters, the pioneers of analytical philosophy, Russell and Frege. This can be found in Thesis 5, comment 132, as he says ‘Laws of inference, which are supposed to justify inferences, as in works of Frege and Russell, have no sense, and would be superfluous’. He then expanded his horizon and the book takes an existentialist form in which he expresses his views on existence, the world, reality, God and death.
The ethical and existentialist part of the book starts at thesis 6.4 ‘All propositions are of equal value.’ And ‘The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it happens: in it no value exists [...] ‘ . Wittgenstein in these theses argues that ethic is transcendental, and because it is also a kind of aesthetics which are ‘one and the same’ therefore cannot be examined and expressed in form of the logical language.(6.422)
Wittgenstein explains there that attempts to approach language in order to talk about life after death, free will and God is a misuse of logic, since language can only reflect the real facts, that allow us find out more about the world. (6.43) Therefore, each language statement can only be the reflection of reality, and therefore any statements on ethical issues, religious or aesthetic are devoid of real significance. But also any discussion on these issues automatically become meaningless and leads to logical disagreement.
For example, he argues that it is a fact that death is not an event in life and we don’t live our lives towards experiencing it. Death is our personal end of the world so why bother talking about eternal life after death since we don’t have a proof of its existence. In his views the eternal life is our present life.
The last thesis of chapter 6 refers to the Tractatus itself. It states that this Tractatus is a kind of ladder, which must be thrown away after it has been used to climb to the top. Wittgenstein states that the philosophy contained in it, rejects itself, because it leads to the conclusion that all philosophy is irrelevant, including that contained in itself. When the ladder is thrown away, the reader will see the world alright again.
Wittgenstein believes that the structure of language and his statements about reality are equal to the structure of reality itself, which the language tries to describe. This means that the language is essentially the window we look through to see the world. Wittgenstein writes about this in his typical brief style: "The proposition is a picture of reality." (4.01) It is worth to say that Wittgenstein does not think about writing grammatical sentences, he instead writes the sentences in a logical sense, because according to him only logical sentence, not a grammatical one is the "model of reality as we imagine it." about which he writes in the book.
According to him in language we use, the sentences can be divided into three basic types: Firstly, logical sentences, which are those that allow us to highlight some facts and which allow us to say whether they are true or false.
Secondly, meaningless sentences, among which we are dealing with contradictions, which means it is the structure that decides about their falsity or honesty. For example if I say a word ‘see/sea/C’, no one will know which ‘sea/see/C’ I am talking about till I put it in the right context. It can be discovered logically. These sentences are meaningless because their truth or not depends on the fact or reality that the language is trying to describe. And thirdly those, which despite the grammatical correctness of the statements, are false because you cannot tell whether they are honest or not, either in the way of logical analysis, or verification principle.
Verification principle is very important to Wittgenstein. If the statement can’t be verified then it’s meaningless, therefore, don’t waste your time on propositions which can’t be explained, though if it reaches the pass the verification test then the proposition is true.
The book finishes with the conclusion ‘what cannot we speak about we must pass over in silence’, which sums up the whole idea of the book. By this Wittgenstein shows how to put a limit to the thought of something that can’t be said clearly. It may mean that if we can’t talk about matters such God or life after death because this is outside the reality, there is no proof of their existence and therefore our logical language can’t express their meaning in words, therefore it is better and easier to keep it quiet, not think about it and deal with more real things, such as the presence.
