Wittgenstein on thinking about thinking

Volume 10 Number 9 September 8 - October 13 2014

 

The Tractus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, was the latest text explored in the 10 Great Books series. Professor Greg Restall discussed this text that has influenced Twentieth Century philosophers and linguists alike. By Laura Soderlind.

The Tractus Logico-Philosophicus is a 1919 work by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

This was one of his early works, written when Wittgenstein was only twenty, while he was in the trenches and a prisoner of war during the First World War, fighting for the Austro-Hungarian army.

“It was a work of early young genius,” says Professor Greg Restall. 

“In this little book, he thinks he has solved all the problems of philosophy. It’s an amazingly bizarre and provocative book.

“Wittgenstein was a loner and an outsider and a provocateur. That’s what makes him so useful to philosophers,” Professor Restall says.

In this book, Wittgenstein took into account the technical advances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the prevailing mathematical logic. 

“Wittgenstein thought it was really important to know how logic, information and knowledge works. But it was really important to know its limits,” Professor Restall says.

The language and structure used by Wittgenstein, somewhat austere and precise to the point of each sentence being numbered and categorized, reflects some of his sentiments about language and communication.

The final breath and sentence of Tractus Logico-Philosophicus is: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”

Language is the means we have available to fashion and understand reality, yet it is profoundly limited and cannot express or illuminate all thoughts effectively. 

The book questions what ideas and thoughts can be put into words and what cannot.

“Here Wittgenstein is almost peering at something through a microscope looking at something further and further in its finer details,” Professor Restall explains.

“He looks at the conceptual structure of the different movements of thoughts and what’s involve,d and the assumptions we make, and how language hooks onto the world. 

“This book explores a new way of thinking about thinking.”

 

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