Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
by Ludwig Wittgenstein(1921)
PhilosophyGerman
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Ludwig Wittgenstein(1921)
Seven numbered propositions, branching into sub-propositions like the limbs of a crystal, claim to draw the boundary of everything that can be said and thereby to reveal, by silence, everything that matters most. Composed in the trenches and prison camps of the First World War and published in 1921, the Tractatus was written by a young man of thirty-two who believed he had solved all the problems of philosophy. The work is austere and beautiful, a cathedral of logic built to demonstrate its own limits. The world is everything that is the case; what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. Between those two poles the book maps language, thought, and reality with a precision that borders on the mystical.
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