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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
It took a while, and I still missed a lot, but this was a magical experience.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
WHEW. I just want my people to know that, no, I did not understand the Tractatus. Well, some of it. I read this for a class I’m taking on Wittgenstein so I feel lucky that the book was taught to me, because let’s be honest, this is not free reading. And this is also not a review. In fact, under a Tractarian doctrine we can’t even write reviews, or make judgements of value, or metaphysical claims, or do anything fun at all without it being nonsense. But old Ludwig breaks his rules, so I suppose I can too.
Highly modernist, incredibly dense, possibly incoherent, with a mean twist of mysticism at the end. This is not your average analytic philosophy. 4/5
Highly modernist, incredibly dense, possibly incoherent, with a mean twist of mysticism at the end. This is not your average analytic philosophy. 4/5
The good: flashes of insight and interesting comments about the limits of philosophy. Plus there is an almost Hollywood-esque twist at the end as Wittgenstein pulls the whole edifice down around him by declaring that propositions that don’t directly concern verifiable facts are “nonsense” - this of course includes most if not all the propositions of the TLP. I believe we are meant to understand post-hoc that this is the case while still learning from what he has shown (not said to) us.
The bad: all the duelling with Russell and Frege about this and that issues in contemporary logic got very tedious as I just don’t have the background for it. The book is also somewhat hampered by the long and anticlimactic build up to the “general propositional form”. The lack of examples as to what elementary propositions actually are is very disconcerting - particularly as most of the book pertains to these elusive propositions! Lastly, that Wittgenstein himself apparently rejected his picture theory of propositions (as it doesn’t encompass enough of what language actually is used for) left me a little underwhelmed by the book as a whole - especially given its “masterpiece” status in the cannon of philosophy.
The bad: all the duelling with Russell and Frege about this and that issues in contemporary logic got very tedious as I just don’t have the background for it. The book is also somewhat hampered by the long and anticlimactic build up to the “general propositional form”. The lack of examples as to what elementary propositions actually are is very disconcerting - particularly as most of the book pertains to these elusive propositions! Lastly, that Wittgenstein himself apparently rejected his picture theory of propositions (as it doesn’t encompass enough of what language actually is used for) left me a little underwhelmed by the book as a whole - especially given its “masterpiece” status in the cannon of philosophy.
fast-paced
challenging
reflective
fast-paced